Friday (November 17) looks to be an exciting day for space enthusiasts.
SpaceX plans to launch the second-ever test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Friday from Starbase, the company’s facility in far south Texas. Liftoff is scheduled to take place over a two-hour period beginning at 8 a.m. EST (1300 GMT), and you can watch all the action here on Space.com.
But what will this procedure involve? Read on for a short explanation of this highly anticipated mission.
Related: Watching SpaceX launch Starship, the world’s largest rocket, was simply unreal (video)
The demonstration will begin at 7:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT), which is when SpaceX plans to begin streaming its launch online. After about 10 minutes, the spacecraft’s 39 Raptor engines — 33 in the Super Heavy first stage and six in the spacecraft’s upper stage, known as Starship — will begin to cool before igniting, according to SpaceX mission description.
Ten seconds before launch, SpaceX will activate the water deluge system located beneath Starbase’s orbital launch pad. This piece of equipment – a reinforced steel plate that sprays water – was designed to weaken Super Heavy’s 33 Raptors, protecting the launch base and surrounding infrastructure.
This power was on full display during Starship’s first (and so far only) test flight, which occurred on April 20. The Super Heavy Raptors tore a hole beneath the launch pad that day, sending chunks of concrete and other debris flying high to the south. Texas skies.
The April 20 flight was intended to send the upper stage partially around Earth, with a target for landing in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. But this did not happen. The Starship’s two stages failed to separate, and SpaceX intentionally blew up the vehicle four minutes after liftoff.
Related: Stunning photos of SpaceX’s first spacecraft launch
Friday’s trip has the same basic goals as the April 20 trip.
If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft’s two stages will be separated by 2 minutes and 41 seconds after liftoff. This will be achieved through “hot staging”, where the upper stage engines begin firing shortly before separation. This is a change from the first launch, which used a traditional staging strategy.
The Super Heavy will fire the engine several times over the next few minutes, as it steers itself toward landing in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff.
Meanwhile, the spacecraft’s upper stage will continue to make its way upward and eastward, reaching a maximum speed close to orbital speed (which is about 17,000 miles per hour, or 27,400 kilometers per hour). But the spacecraft will not complete an orbit around the Earth; About 90 minutes after liftoff, it will touch down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii for a “exciting landing,” as SpaceX’s mission description states.
Both stages of the spacecraft are designed to be fully and quickly reusable, but Friday’s flight will be the only mission for these particular pieces of hardware. SpaceX’s mission description shows the two stages descending directly into the sea, rather than on a drone ship, as the first stages of the company’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets typically do.
Whatever happens on Friday — complete success, complete failure or (most likely) something in between — expect another spacecraft launch in the not-so-distant future. SpaceX is working on multiple Starship vehicles right now, and plans to learn from all of their flights.
“This rapid, iterative development approach has been the foundation for all of SpaceX’s major innovative developments, including Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink,” the company’s mission description states. “Iterative improvement is essential as we work to build a fully reusable transportation system capable of carrying crew and cargo to Earth orbit, helping humanity return to the Moon, and ultimately traveling to Mars and beyond.”
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