SpaceX - Starship Super Heavy Test Flight patch.
April 20, 2023
Image above: SpaceX Starship Flight Test liftoff. Image Credits: SpaceX/Screen capture: Orbiter.ch Aerospace.
For the first time, SpaceX used a Super Heavy rocket booster to launch a Starship upper stage, from Starbase in Texas, on 20 April 2023, at 13:30 UTC (08:30 CDT).
A fully stacked Starship left the ground today (April 20) for the first time ever — and it came to an explosive end high in the Texas sky.
With a mighty roar, the first-ever integrated Starship rocket soared toward space today (April 20) from SpaceX's seaside Starbase facility at Boca Chica Beach here on South Texas' Gulf Coast at 9:33 a.m. EDT (1333 GMT; 8:33 a.m. local Texas time).
It was a spectacular and surreal sight: The 394-foot-tall (120 meters) Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, rose off Starbase's orbital launch mount atop a pillar of flame generated by its 33 first-stage Raptor engines. Starship kept climbing in defiance of its tremendous bulk, its shiny, stainless-steel body reflecting the Texas morning sun all the while.
The climb didn't last long, however. The 165-foot-tall (50 m) Starship upper stage was supposed to separate from the Super Heavy first stage about three minutes after liftoff, but that never happened. The two vehicles remained connected, and the stack began to tumble, ultimately exploding — or experiencing a "rapid unscheduled disassembly," as SpaceX terms it — just under four minutes after launch.
Image above: SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy explodes minutes after launch after encountering an issue. Image Credits: SpaceX/Screen capture: Orbiter.ch Aerospace.
But the employees gathered at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California to watch the launch let out a massive cheer at Starship's demise, celebrating the gains made on its first-ever liftoff. The giant vehicle reached a maximum altitude of about 24 miles (39 kilometers), according to the data on SpaceX's launch webcast.
"To get this far is amazing," SpaceX's Kate Tice said during the webcast. "Everything after clearing the tower was icing on the cake."
It was SpaceX's second attempt to launch Starship; an initial try on April 17 ended in a scrub due to a frozen valve.
Flight Test Timeline / Best Case Scenario
The flight plan today called for Super Heavy to come back to Earth in the Gulf of Mexico roughly eight minutes into the flight. The upper stage, meanwhile, was supposed to fire up its six Raptors to head up to the final frontier, and a planned partial trip around our planet.
The goal was to get Starship to a maximum altitude of about 145 miles (233 km), then bring it barreling back into Earth's atmosphere for a trial-by-fire reentry, ending with a hard splashdown in the Pacific Ocean not far from the Hawaiian island of Kauai about 90 minutes after liftoff.
Elon Musk on Twitter
SpaceX wasn't expecting everything to work out, however; new rockets often fail on their first test flight, and Starship is far bolder and more complex than most launchers. (It has 33 first-stage engines and stands nearly 400 feet tall, after all.) Rather, today was all about gathering data and responding properly to whatever ended up happening, company representatives stressed.
"Now this was a development test. It's a first test flight of Starship. And the goal is to gather the data and as we said, clear the pad and get ready to go again," SpaceX Principal Intergration Engineer John Insprucker said during the company's livestream. "So you never know exactly what's going to happen. But as we promised, excitement is guaranteed. And Starship gave us a rather spectacular end to what was truly an incredible test as far"
Related articles:
SpaceX - The launch of Starship Super Heavy is postponed
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2023/04/spacex-launch-of-starship-super-heavy.html
Starship's first orbital launch will take place on April 20, says Elon Musk
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2023/04/starships-first-orbital-launch-will.html
Related links:
SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/
SpaceX Starship: https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/
Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: SpaceX/SciNews/Space.com/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
Greetings, Orbiter.ch
