Spacecraft launch live – Il Post

At 2.25pm ​​today, barring postponements, the massive SpaceX spaceship that may one day take astronauts to the moon will attempt to reach space and then return to Earth, only to self-destruct in the Indian Ocean.

By Emanuele Minetti

After two failed attempts, today the private American space company SpaceX will attempt to reach space with its massive Starship spacecraft and then return to the atmosphere until it is destroyed in the Indian Ocean.

Unless postponed, the test will take place around 2.25pm ​​(Italian time, initially scheduled for 1pm) and will serve to verify new progress in the development of the launch system and spacecraft, both essential for the return of NASA's Artemis lunar program. To explore the moon with humans, more than 50 years after the last Apollo landing on the moon. Like previous launches, this one is also experimental and carried out without people on board: it could end with great success, or with a new giant explosion.

Live broadcast of the launch

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Watch the third Starship flight test → https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK https://t.co/1u46r769Vp

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2024

SpaceX has been working on Starship for about a decade, with the goal of having a launch system and spaceship much more powerful than the rockets it currently uses to ferry satellites into orbit and crews and supplies to the International Space Station. The development turned out to be much longer and more complex than SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who initially raised the possibility of reaching Mars in the early years of this decade, had anticipated. Things have turned out very differently and delays have accumulated that could also affect the Artemis program, whose lunar goals are no small feat, but still less ambitious than those of Mars.

Starship is a spacecraft 50 meters high, equivalent to the height of a 16-storey building, and about 9 meters in diameter: it uses six engines powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane, which when fully loaded delivers about 300,000 tons of gas. Spaceship block. Once operational, it can be used to transport large satellites, space station modules and crews into orbit toward the Moon. The spacecraft is designed to reach the orbit of Earth or other celestial bodies and return to Earth in a controlled landing, so that it can be used again.

The spacecraft on the launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

However, a spaceship does not have enough power to overcome Earth's atmosphere on its own. To give it the necessary boost, the Super Heavy rocket was used, a large rocket about 70 meters high and equipped with 33 engines, always powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. Super Heavy is designed to propel the spacecraft beyond the atmosphere and maneuver for a later return to Earth, as SpaceX's partially reusable Falcon 9 rockets already do. With this solution, it is not necessary to build new rockets for each launch and launch costs can be significantly reduced and made more frequent.

If in theory all this works without problems, in practice it has been proven that the system is complex in development and management due to significant technical challenges and simply because the development of a completely new solution needs to be tested. The two launches undertaken so far have served precisely this: conducting large-scale testing to discover what works, what doesn't, and what needs to change. Especially thanks to a $2.9 billion contract awarded by NASA to build Artemis, SpaceX can afford to test its systems in the field and see them destroyed while gathering as much data as possible to improve subsequent versions of its rockets that cost several hundred million dollars.

The first test conducted in April 2023 was very useful in this sense. Super Heavy's Raptor engines damaged the launch pad, and several then stopped working properly, making it necessary to destroy the rocket and spacecraft for safety reasons. The data collected led to the construction of a reinforced launch platform, equipped with water jets to mitigate the shock wave resulting from the ignition of the engines, and to a review of the operation of the engines themselves and the ignition times of the engines that operate on them. Starship separates from Super Heavy to continue its journey into space.

The spacecraft shortly after the explosion in April 2023 (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

The second test in November 2023 showed important progress: the first phase of the launch took place regularly, with the Super Heavy and Starship separated. However, an engine problem made it necessary for the Super Heavy to self-destruct while it was still high in the atmosphere, thus canceling the planned return to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Because of the leak, it was also necessary to interrupt the flight of the spacecraft, which was supposed to reach a point in the Pacific Ocean not far from the Hawaiian Islands.

In a sense, the November launch was a major failure, but it was a success: the spacecraft reached space for the first time, albeit for a very short time, demonstrating the resilience of many systems.

For today's launch, SpaceX has planned several new features, starting with how it will manage refueling for its Super Heavy and Starship vehicles at Boca Chica, the launch base the company has built and gradually expanded in recent years in Texas. Refueling will take place close to launch, and will finish a few minutes before the engines start, thanks to a faster, more powerful system for transporting liquid methane and liquid oxygen to larger tanks.

When there are three seconds left in the countdown, Super Heavy will turn on the engines to reach the necessary power at 0 seconds. The rocket carrying the spacecraft on top will head east and after a little less than 3 minutes it will separate from the spaceship, which by then will have already turned on its engines and will continue its ascent to overcome the Earth's atmosphere. Once it reaches space, it will not complete a full orbit around the Earth, but rather a long parabola that will take it back when it is over the Indian Ocean.

(SpaceX)

Before returning, SpaceX will try to open and close the large door of the spaceship, which will be used in the future to place Starlink satellites in orbit, which is the company’s service for connecting to the Internet via satellites. Some systems will also be tested to refuel the spacecraft in orbit, along with other similar spacecraft, needed for missions to the moon and beyond. Orbital refueling of this kind has never been attempted before, and adds further complications to NASA's lunar plans (described more fully here). SpaceX will also try to get some of the Starship's Raptor engines running again in the space environment, to test how well they work since they have never been tested outside of Earth's atmosphere.

Once tests in space are completed, Starship will direct the part of the spacecraft equipped with a heat shield, made up of thousands of tiny tiles, to resist the high temperatures that develop during reentry into the atmosphere. If all goes according to plan, the spaceship will arrive in the Indian Ocean in one piece, disintegrating upon a high-speed impact with the water (SpaceX will not be able to recover the Starship or Super Heavy).

Therefore, today's launch plan is richer and more complex than that of the previous two tests, which ended in spectacular explosions. Mission leaders hope today's launch will be spectacular in another way.

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