United States: Mr. Elon Musk’s SpaceX company has conducted a successful ground test of the engines on its huge new rocket system, Starship.
Engineers held a “static fire” on the Super Heavy, a massive rocket booster, igniting 31 out of 33 engines at the base of the vehicle’s lower segment. Super Heavy was made to send SpaceX’s next-generation Starship vehicle towards orbit before returning to Earth.
The firing lasted only a few seconds, with everything clamped in place to prevent any movement. The static fire took place at SpaceX’s R&D facility in Boca Chica, on the Texas/Mexico border.
Mr. Musk posted on Twitter that the team had turned off one engine before the test and that another engine stopped itself, leaving 31 engines firing overall.
The SpaceX owner added that there were “still enough engines to reach orbit.”
The SpaceX Super Heavy booster, with all 33 modern power units, should produce roughly 70 percent more thrust off the launch pad than the N1 rocket that the Soviets developed in the late 1960s to take cosmonauts to the Moon.
Mr. Musk wants to use the vehicle to send satellites and people into Earth’s orbit and beyond.
The static fire of the Super Heavy booster was the last crucial technical test that SpaceX needed to pass before getting ready for a launch attempt. SpaceX had previously conducted static fires with up to 14 engines. Since December 2020, it has conducted a series of test flights of Starship prototypes several miles up to figure out the landing procedure. After several explosive failures, it succeeded in May 2021, with the Starship launching and landing in one piece.
WORLD ROUNDUP: Netflix limits password sharing in 4 countries
