watch SpaceX’s ninth Starship flight check on Tuesday

The FAA final week cleared SpaceX’s Starship to fly once more after concluding its evaluation of the earlier flight, which ended in an explosion, and the subsequent check may now take off as quickly as Tuesday. SpaceX is eyeing Might 27 for Starship’s ninth flight test, with a launch window opening at 7:30PM ET (6:30PM native time for the Texas Starbase). This launch will mark the primary time SpaceX reuses a Tremendous Heavy booster; the booster for flight 9 beforehand flew with Starship’s seventh flight check earlier this yr. Whereas single-use components have been changed, SpaceX says it is reusing 29 of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines.

As all the time, viewers at dwelling will be capable to watch alongside by tuning into the livestream, beginning about half-hour earlier than Starship launches. That can be out there on SpaceX’s website and in a broadcast on its X profile.

SpaceX performed Starship’s eighth flight check again in March, however the automobile bumped into some points a couple of minutes after launch. The Tremendous Heavy booster was in a position to return to the launch website after separation from the higher stage and be efficiently caught by the tower’s “chopstick” arms, however as for the ship itself, a number of Raptor engines shut off, inflicting it to tumble and finally blow itself up.

SpaceX says the difficulty was doubtless attributable to “a {hardware} failure in one of many higher stage’s middle Raptor engines that resulted in inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition.” It is since made some modifications to forestall that from taking place once more. SpaceX stated in an replace on Might 22 that “engines on the Starship’s higher stage will obtain extra preload on key joints, a brand new nitrogen purge system, and enhancements to the propellant drain system.”

For flight 9, the Tremendous Heavy booster will not return to the launch website, however will as a substitute splash down within the ocean. The Starship higher stage will try to deploy eight Starlink dummy satellites, and SpaceX is in any other case trying to this flight to check “a number of experiments targeted on enabling Starship’s higher stage to return to the launch website.”