SpaceX’s latest starship prototype came to life.
The Starship SN10 (“Serial No. 10”) conducted its first “static fire” test on Tuesday (February 23), lighting its three Raptor engines for a few seconds at 18:03 EST (2303 GMT) on SpaceX’s Site in southern Texas, near the settlement of Boca Chica on the Gulf Coast.
Static fires, in which the engines ignite briefly while a rocket remains anchored to the ground, are a common pre-flight check for SpaceX. If all goes well with today’s test, the SN10 will continue on its way to launch soon – perhaps already on Thursday (February 25) – on a 10 km high demonstration flight in the skies of southern Texas.
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SN10 static fire starhip! Fortunately, it was a great test. 🔥🚀🔥 @ NASASpaceflight pic.twitter.com/J6cVUypRgYFebruary 23, 2021
It will be the third high-altitude test for a starship vehicle, after similar trips in December 2020 and February 2 this year by the two immediate predecessors of the SN10, SN8 and SN9. Both flights went well until the end; SN8 and SN9 hit hard on their airfields, exploding into dramatic fireballs.
These flights are a crucial part of the Starship’s development path, which SpaceX sees as the vehicle that will make colonizing Mars economically viable. The starship system will consist of two fully reusable parts: a 165-foot-high (50-meter) spacecraft called Starship and a huge rocket known as the Super Heavy.
The final ship will have six Raptors and the Super Heavy will have about 30 of the engines, said SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. The spacecraft will be powerful enough to launch from the Moon and Mars, but the spacecraft will need a Super Heavy to leave Earth.
We will probably see many more test flight flights in the coming weeks and months, no matter what the launch of the SN10 is. Musk said recently that SpaceX plans to launch a prototype in Earth orbit this year, and he predicts that the starship will regularly carry people by 2023.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.