Musk's mega rocket is getting ready to launch

SpaceX's Starship rocket is scheduled to launch on Thursday from the SpaceX Starbase test facility located on Boca Chica Beach near Brownsville, Texas. The start is scheduled for 11 p.m. Polish time. According to the American station CNN, the launch window will remain open for an hour. Initially, the launch of the mega rocket was scheduled for Wednesday, but due to weather conditions it was postponed to the next day.

Starship is a two-stage mega rocket measuring 123 meters. Its first stage is the Super Heavy booster (i.e. carrier module), and the second stage is Starship, which is a spacecraft. The rocket is intended to carry the largest loads into orbit and significantly reduce the costs of such transport. As announced by Elon Musk's SpaceX company, the seventh flight will test the vehicle's front flaps, which have been made smaller and moved towards the front, away from the heat shield, which significantly reduces their exposure to heating during re-entry into the atmosphere. The drive system has been redesigned, including: the fuel volume was increased by as much as 25 percent, vacuum insulation of fuel lines was used, a new engine fuel supply system and an improved propulsion avionics module were introduced. “All these changes increase the vehicle's performance and enable longer missions,” SpaceX emphasizes. In addition, the first attempt to place a payload in orbit – ten Starlink satellite simulators – will be carried out. Numerous atmospheric entry and landing experiments are also planned, including a ship capture test and the return of the Super Heavy booster.

Thermal shield tests are also expected to be particularly important. During its seventh flight, it will use the latest generation of protective plates and include a backup layer to ensure safety in the event of damage. In addition, a significant number of protective tiles will be removed from the ship's upper stage, which will allow for strength tests in areas most exposed to damage. Various types of metal plates will also be tested, including one with active cooling. Furthermore, the ship's reentry profile is designed to deliberately stress the structural limits of the flaps at the maximum dynamic pressure experienced during entry. “The coming year will be a breakthrough for Starship, with the goal of launching a system for reusing the entire vehicle and implementing increasingly ambitious missions. We will strive to send people and cargo to the Earth's orbit, the Moon and Mars,” SpaceX emphasizes.

During the sixth test flight of the rocket, in the second half of November 2023, not everything went as planned. Its launch module, instead of returning to Texas to the mechanical arms of the launch tower, was redirected to the Gulf of Mexico. The second part of the rocket landed programmatically in the Indian Ocean.