Super Heavy-Starship Test Calls Flight after trouble with SpaceX Ground Systems

After three horrific in-flight failures in a row, SpaceX read a huge super heavy-starship rocket for launch on Sunday evening from Texas Gulf Coast and gave a variety of upgrades for testing and deliberately emphasized the vehicle to learn more about its abilities.

Test flight number 10 was expected to be on ET at 7:30 pm from SpaceX’s Starbase Flight and Manufacturing Facility and the team was in the process of pumping liquid oxygen and methane fuel in a 40-storey-rocket rocket when the company announced a scrub.

The company said, “Standing below today’s tenth flight to allow time to resolve an issue with the ground system,” On XNo other details were provided, including whether the team would make another attempt to get the rocket out of the field.

The flight plan called for a 30-foot wide, 230-foot long super heavy booster, causing a thrust of more than 16 million pounds, before it falls down, going back to the coast to get out of the dense lower atmosphere before blinking from all sides.

During three of the previous nine previous test flights, the booster flew back all the way on his launch pad, where huge mechanical weapons on Seva Gantree dropped the descending rocket out of the midar. This time, due to planned tests, Super Heavy was expected to descend to splash in the Gulf, but it never happened.

SpaceX had earlier stated that the primary objective for booster testing was focused on its landing burn. One of the three center engines used for the final stage of landing was going to be “intentionally disabled, which is disabled to collect data on the capacity of the backup engine from the middle ring to complete the landing burn, the company said on its website.

The booster was then going to use two engines towards the end of the dynasty and was briefly hovering before leaving in the Gulf.

The 160-foot-tall starship, meanwhile, would have led to a suborbital process, operated by its own six raptor engines, which takes it in half the world worldwide, before a stomach-first reverentry, a flip back to vertical and a rocket-guard dynasty to splashed in the Ocean Ocean.

With the deployment of eight Starlink simulator satellites, Starship’s flight computer planned to attempt several other tests, including the in-space engine restart, to verify the performance of several upgrades implemented in view of the most recent test flight failures.

It is important for SpaceX and founder Elon Musk to work from the giant launcher, who designed Ultra-Haavi-Lift rockets to launch thousands of next generation starlinks and other satellites in the Earth’s orbit and take settling and equipment for a day to Mars.

The rocket is also important for NASA, which is paying more than $ 3 billion to develop a modified version of the Starship upper phase to carry the Artemis astronauts on the surface of the moon in 2027.

But that flight will require 10 to 20 super heavy-starship flights to the “human landing system,” or HLS, lander to fuel, before it can move on the moon. It has never been tried to transfer thousands of gallons of super-coined liquid nitrogen and oxygen to space.

And it is still not known how Spacex planned to control propagnant temperature to reduce the amount that naturally heated and reduce the amount that turns into gas, which should be converted into overboard. Spacex has not given any details. Musk promised pre-launch updates on Sunday, but the talk was canceled without any clarification.

Given the number of flights that should be successfully executed to display credibility, NASA will expect, the 2027 target date for Artemis 3 Moon Landing is considered unrealistic, if it is not impossible to meet by many aerospace supervisors.

China planned to launch its own astronauts on the moon by 2030, and, regardless of the result of the Sunday test flight, is not clear at the point whether NASA and SpaceX will return to the moon using the Starsip lander before their own flag on the lunar surface.

Given the sheer shape and power of super heavy-starship-in which the current space launch system of NASA, or SLS, is more than double to double of the moon rocket-technical problems were not unexpected during development.

But now and given the short time between NASA’s first employed Artemis Moon Landing, the problems have clearly set the program back and doubted the overall mission architecture, especially to fuel the lander for their flight for the moon in a low order requirement of 10 to 20 problem-free flights.

In 2023 and 2024, super heavy boosters and starships ended in frightening failures with the first three testing flights of the upper stage destroying both stages, either still connected to each other or after separation.

The fourth flight in June 2024 was generally successful in a controlled splashadown in the Gulf with Super Heavy Flying, while Starships followed the sub-system planned for splash in the Indian Ocean. The wings of the ship were damaged by reantry heating, but otherwise worked as required.

In October 2024, the fifth flight was exposed by a successful super heavy return at the launch pad gantry, where huge mechanical weapons snatched the rocket into the middle air. Meanwhile, Starship managed a second controlled splashadown in the Indian Ocean, although it again caused wings damage during reverentry.

During the sixth integrated flight test in November 2024, Super Heavy attempted another return to the launch site, but was converted into a Gulf Splashdown as due to the launch loss of the significant sensor in the pad capture mechanism of the pad. Starship again flew to splash a controlled Indian Ocean with minimal flap damage.

But the next three flights, in January, March and May of this year, ended with terrible failures. Two super heavy boosters successfully returned to the launch site, but the most recently broke down testing the entry of a high angle attack in the Gulf.

All three starships were destroyed after a frightening malfunction, including two propellant leaks, an on-board fire and several engine failures.

In addition to the flight records, another starship was destroyed on the ground when a high -pressure nitrogen tank exploded during an engine test firing at the starbase launch site.