SpaceX let the cryogenic fuel flow into a fully stacked Starship and Super Heavy to prove it could handle a full load of propellant Monday.
The first-time full wet dress rehearsal sent more than 10 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen into the combined booster and Starship at SpaceX’s Starbase test launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
“Today’s test will help verify a full launch countdown sequence, as well as the performance of Starship and the orbital pad for flight-like operations,” the company posted to Twitter.
Starship 24, the 24th prototype of the next-generation rocket, was stacked atop the Super Heavy 7 booster on Jan. 9 towering at a combined 395 feet tall after being put in place by the “Chopsticks” arms that are part of the launch integration tower that SpaceX refers to as “Mechazilla.”
The dress rehearsal came as Elon Musk’s company ticks off a checklist of items needed before an orbital launch attempt that Musk said could come in late February or March.
Still to come before that attempt is a full hot fire of the booster’s 33 Raptor 2 engines. SpaceX will unstack Ship 24 so the booster can perform the full static fire, the company announced Tuesday.
To date, the company has been slowly rebuilding test fires with more and more engines since an incident last summer that left the booster in need of repairs, resulting in a fireball on the pad. The most recent test fire came in November when SpaceX used 14 of the engines.
If successful, Starship and Super Heavy would become the most powerful rocket to ever to launch from Earth generating 17 million pounds of thrust from 33 Raptor 2 engines using a combination of liquid methane and liquid oxygen for propellants.
It would nearly double the power that was seen from NASA’s Space Launch System when it took off from Kennedy Space Center on the Artemis I mission, the current title holder among successful orbital rockets.
The Starship itself has six Raptor 2 engines, and will have the capacity to bring more than 220,000 pounds of crew and cargo to low-Earth orbit, which is slightly more than the current SLS capacity.
The success of the Starship program is essential to NASA’s plans to return humans to the lunar surface by 2025. SpaceX was awarded the Human Landing System contract for both the Artemis III and IV missions. For Artemis III, which looks to bring the first woman to the moon, she and one other astronaut will leave the Orion spacecraft while orbiting the moon after climbing aboard a docked version of Starship, which will then bring them down to a location on the south pole. It would be the first time humans returned to the moon since Apollo 17 landed more than 50 years ago in 1972.
While the test flights of Starship are slated from Texas, work continues for it to launch from KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A where its current stable of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets take off.
For its first orbital test, though, which still needs the OK from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Super Heavy booster looks to separate and land on a barge in the Gulf of Mexico while Starship continues on an orbital flight that would bring it back down for a landing in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
To date, the company has flown prototype versions of Starship without the booster to about 6 miles altitude, and attempted landings back in Texas, sometimes with fiery results. Those used only three or fewer of the new, powerful Raptor engines.
The Starship and Super Heavy is designed to be fully reusable.
Musk’s plans are for the massive rocket to eventually provide transportation for the infrastructure and people needed to build a colony on Mars.
More immediate Starship plans are to send up a test flight to land on the moon ahead of Artemis III and continue the company’s Starlink satellite delivery plans. Also on tap is what would be the first tourist flight to orbit the moon.
Follow Orlando Sentinel space coverage at Facebook.com/goforlaunchsentinel.
