Elon Musk has revealed the rigorous preparation SpaceX is going through ahead of its next Starship launch.
Speaking during a recent live chat on Twitter, the entrepreneur announced that SpaceX has made more than 1,000 changes to the spacecraft’s design since its inaugural liftoff on April 20.
That mission ended with an almighty bang as the uncrewed rocket exploded in the skies above its Texas launch pad.
Much is riding on the success of the next takeoff as Starship is poised to take Nasa astronauts back to the moon around 2025. Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming SpaceX launch, including its estimated date and the improvements in store for the spacecraft.
When is the next Starship launch?
Musk said on Twitter that the next liftoff would take place in six weeks. The SpaceX boss has revealed the company is performing pad upgrades to its Starbase spaceport, which was damaged as a result of the previous launch.
Saying that, Musk has a habit of missing his self-imposed deadlines. He previously said that it would take six weeks for the next launch after the liftoff on April 20.
Why did Starship explode?
During its debut test flight, the Starship rocket spectacularly exploded just four minutes after takeoff in view of spectators.
So what exactly went wrong? Well, it seems that After leaving the launchpad and ascending to an altitude of about 39km, the first and second stages of the launch vehicle failed to separate.
The flight-termination system — a series of charges that can usually be found on the side of most rockets — was then initiated to destroy the vehicle, either by the Starship computer or someone on the ground.
Footage of the test flight also appeared to show that at least six of the 33 raptor engines underneath the vehicle were not lit up during its ascent.
This could indicate that either the rocket launched with some of the engines turned off, or that they were shut off deliberately during the flight when SpaceX noticed something was not right.
SpaceX said the Starship had “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation”.
What changes are being made to Starship?
Arguably the biggest change discussed by Musk is that SpaceX is going to implement something called “hot staging”.
The term refers to a process in which the engines on a vehicle’s upper stage begin firing before those on the first-stage booster finish shutting down. Hot staging is already used by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and could help to prevent Starship from twirling out of control again.
The technique will also boost the rocket’s payload-to-orbit capacity by around 10%, Musk said.
But, the switch to hot staging has also led to design changes on Starship.
"The superhot plasma from the upper-stage engines has got to go somewhere," Musk said during the Twitter chat. "So we’re adding an extension to the booster that is almost all vents, essentially. So that allows the upper-stage engine plume to go through the sort of vented extension of the booster and not just blow itself up."
As for the launch pad, Space X is reinforcing it using 35,300 cubic feet of high-strength concrete at the mount. It is also installing a water-spouting heel plate, which Musk described as a “gigantic upside-down shower head, to counteract the heat created by the rocket’s 33 Raptor engines.
SpaceX completed a pre-launch static fire test of the upper-stage of the Starship on Monday, during which it tested its engines while the rocket was still on the ground.
