SCIENCE<\/p>\n
Replacement Raptors head for liftoff without a static fire test<\/p>\n
SpaceX is gearing up for another attempt to launch Starship following a last-second abort on July 16 and a scrub due to weather yesterday.<\/p>\n
The 90-minute launch window for Starship’s 13th flight test will open at 1745 CT on Friday, July 24. The launch was postponed by 24 hours due to weather, according to SpaceX.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk’s rocketeers explained: “A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship’s heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won’t be possible with today’s weather conditions. Visibility is forecast to be ideal for a Friday attempt.”<\/p>\n
The first attempt last week was aborted<\/a> in the final seconds after some of the booster’s Raptor engines failed to start. At the time, Musk said<\/a> “two Raptors will be removed and replaced.”<\/p>\n Interestingly, the company did not perform a static fire test of the booster with the new engines on July 22, opting for what appeared to be little more than a leak check. The Register asked SpaceX what testing it performed, but it has yet to respond. In a post on X, the company only stated<\/a>\u00a0“additional preflight testing on Super Heavy complete.” There is\u00a0speculation<\/a> that last-second shutdowns, whether during a static fire or launch attempt, may not be kind to Raptor engines.<\/p>\n The Starship project is under greater scrutiny than ever. NASA requires it to have orbital capability for Artemis III in 2027, and a launch cadence high enough to support a lunar landing mission in 2028. SpaceX is also a publicly traded company and, while its current stock price has already fallen below its IPO, it could do without further rattling investor nerves with a failure.<\/p>\n Should all go well, the entire mission should last just over an hour. After launching Starship, the Super Heavy booster is expected to make a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship will use its Raptor engines to enter a suborbital trajectory before coming down in the Indian Ocean. <\/p>\n Before re-entry, SpaceX plans to deploy 20 Starlink V3 satellites, which will follow the vehicle on its suborbital trajectory, and attempt a relight of a Raptor engine. The latter is a critical step on the path to Starship going orbital. \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCIENCE Replacement Raptors head for liftoff without a static fire test SpaceX is gearing up for another attempt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-823291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}