SpaceX-Rakete Starship in Boca Chica
After the last-minute cancellation on Monday, the much-anticipated first test flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket is now scheduled to take place on Thursday. The new start window will open on Thursday at 3:28 p.m. CEST, the US company announced.
After the last-minute cancellation on Monday, the much-anticipated first test flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket is now scheduled to take place on Thursday. The new launch window opens on Thursday at 8:28 a.m. local time (3:28 p.m. CEST) and closes after 62 minutes, SpaceX announced on Monday (local time) on the online service Twitter.
After the launch attempt was canceled on Monday, a SpaceX employee initially said it would be “at least 48 hours before we can attempt this test flight again.” The launch of the 120-meter rocket from SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, was stopped less than ten minutes before it was scheduled to ignite. As a kind of dress rehearsal, the countdown continued until ten seconds before the originally planned start time.
A technical problem with pressure equalization on the most powerful space rocket ever built was given as the reason for the cancellation. SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote in the short message service Twitter that a valve was apparently frozen. But SpaceX “learned a lot” from the launch attempt.
Starship consists of a 70 meter high rocket called Super Heavy and a 50 meter long space shuttle with additional engines. The US space agency Nasa has selected Starship to fly humans to the moon again for the first time in more than 50 years on the Artemis 3 mission at the end of 2025. Even flights to Mars should be possible with the rocket. In February, almost all of the rocket’s engines were successfully fired for the first time during a test at the rocket base.
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