Elon Musk’s SpaceX postpones debut flight of Starship rocket system

Boca Chica, April 17 (BNA): Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Monday canceled the highly anticipated launch of its powerful new Starship rocket, delaying the vehicle’s first uncrewed test flight into space.

The two-stage rocket, which stands 394 feet (120 meters) higher than the Statue of Liberty, was originally scheduled to lift off from the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica, Texas, during a two-hour launch period that began at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT), Reuters reported.

But the California-based aerospace company announced in a live webcast during the final minutes of the countdown that it had been holding back the flight attempt for at least 48 hours, citing a pressure problem in the lower-stage rocket.

Musk, the company’s billionaire founder and CEO, told a private audience on Twitter Sunday night that the mission has a better chance of winding down than going live with launch on Monday.

Taking the craft into space for the first time will mark a major milestone in SpaceX’s ambition to return humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars — at least initially as part of NASA’s recently launched human spaceflight program, Artemis.

The successful first flight will also instantly classify the Starship System as the most powerful launch vehicle on Earth.

Both the lower-stage Super Heavy booster rocket and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft that will carry it into space are designed as reusable components, able to return to Earth for an easy landing—a maneuver that has become routine for SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket.

But neither stage was recovered for the first test flight into space, which is expected to take no more than 90 minutes.

Starship cruise ship prototypes have made five sub-space flights as high as 6 miles (10 km) above Earth in recent years, but the Super Heavy booster never left Earth.

In February, SpaceX ran a booster test, igniting 31 of 33 Raptor engines for about 10 seconds with the rocket held in place vertically atop a platform.

The FAA just last Friday granted authorization for what will be the first test flight of the fully stacked missile system, clearing up a final regulatory hurdle for the long-awaited launch.

If all goes as planned at the next launch show, all 33 of the Raptor’s engines will fire simultaneously to lift the spacecraft on a journey that nearly completes an orbit around Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and plunging freely into the Pacific Ocean at supersonic speeds. . Speed ​​is about 60 miles (97 km) off the coast of the northern Hawaiian Islands.

After separating from the spacecraft, the Super Heavy booster is expected to perform controlled return flight starts before plunging into the Gulf of Mexico.

As designed, the Starship rocket is nearly twice as powerful as NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), which made its first unmanned flight into orbit in November, sending a NASA spacecraft called Orion on a 10-day journey around the moon and beyond.

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