SpaceX, owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk, is trying to launch a test StarshipAnd The ship he hopes will carry up to 100 passengers to the Moon and Mars. After the failed attempt on Monday due to a technical problem, the ship plans to take off without a crew aboard the Super Heavy missile, the most powerful in history, between 3:28 pm and 4:30 pm today, Spanish Peninsula time, from the company’s base near the city of Brownsville in Texas, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
The cancellation was on Monday due to a pressure valve failure. As Musk himself explained On the social network Twitter, which he also owns. A few hours ago, a billionaire he tweeted All systems are ready to boot today.
Hundreds of people gathered on nearby beaches to watch the Super Heavy rocket’s 33 Raptor engines ignite, the top of which visible is the spacecraft’s belly covered in thousands of black carbon fiber tiles. Other materials to protect it from high temperatures during its return to the earth’s surface.
Starship It is an essential part of the new space race to the moon led by the United States. The reusable ship would, in theory, be responsible for ferrying the first astronauts to the lunar surface more than 50 years ago: a woman and a non-white person, according to plans by the US space agency, which has $1 million. Contract with Musk to use Starship. The chosen date is 2025, though it remains to be seen if the ship will be ready by then.
This will be the Super Heavy’s first flight connected to the ship Starshipalthough SpaceX fired 31 of the 33 Raptor engines, which are running simultaneously.
The reusable Super Heavy, a monster as tall as a 40-story building, is slated to propel the spacecraft for eight minutes. The vehicle on top of the missile will reach an altitude of about 240 kilometers and will fly for 90 minutes. The aircraft is designed for vertical landings and reuse, but the test is focused only on takeoff and flight without a crew or satellites, which is expected to plunge into the Pacific Ocean about 100 kilometers north of the island of Kauai. in Hawaii (United States).
On Sunday, Elon Musk actually lowered expectations in a speech to Twitter users. He asserted that there were “a million reasons” why the test had failed, and warned that if they saw risks they would abort the attempt. “There is a good chance that we will delay it, because we are going to be very careful with this release. And if things go wrong there are a lot of things that can go wrong.”
One of the obsessions of the billionaire and the rest of the company’s 11,000 employees is to launch the rocket successfully and get as far away as possible from the huge 146-meter-high launch pad, which is also designed to re-hunt the rocket once. . But in this test the artifact will fall into the sea in the Gulf of Mexico.
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