It looks like a sci-fi scene: two shiny silver rockets side by side in the Texas sun waiting for their turn to fly.
But the shiny and finned SpaceX rockets – prototypes of starship SN9 and SN10 – do exist and met at the site for the first time on Friday (January 29) at the company’s South Texas facility, near the village of Boca Chica. The SN10 vehicle, SpaceX’s latest in a line of new reusable starship prototypes, has been launched onto the platform while its SN9 counterpart awaits its own test flight, which can be launched on Monday (February 1).
“Starship SN9 & SN10,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter Friday while he shared a view of the two suborbital rockets. Video cameras from the tourist site Spadre.com and others also captured the view, including this close-up of NASASpaceflight.com.
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Starship SN9 and SN10 are the latest test versions of a planned fully reusable launch system designed by SpaceX to fly astronauts and payloads in deep space missions. SN9 and Sn10 are each powered by three of SpaceX’s Raptor engines and designed to fly on suborbital test flights up to 6.2 miles (10 kilometers)
SpaceX launched the Starship SN8 prototype, an earlier version of the vehicle, on a similar test flight on December 9. This flight reached an altitude of about 7.8 miles (12.5 km) and made two distressing loops to return to Earth for an attempted landing. He was unable to fix the ringtone and exploded with the impact.
SpaceX expects better performance from the SN9.
SpaceX eagle-eyed observers have been watching the SN9 prototype on its test bench for days, while the company appeared to be preparing the rocket for launch. However, officials at the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees the launch of commercial rockets, said the company did not yet have final approval for the launch.
“The FAA will continue to work with SpaceX to evaluate additional information provided by the company as part of its application to modify its launch license,” an FAA spokesman said in a statement to Space.com on Friday.
The SpaceX spacecraft is 165 feet high (50 meters), with its final version using six Raptor engines to reach space. It will be launched on top of a massive booster, called Super Heavy, which will use about 30 Raptor engines to transport spacecraft vehicles to orbit. Both spacecraft are designed to land back on Earth for later reuse, as well as SpaceX’s current fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters.
NASA chose the SpaceX spacecraft as one of three different designs, each led by a different team, to potentially take astronauts to the moon as part of the space agency’s Artemis program.
Send an email to Tariq Malik at [email protected] or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us on @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.