Look on it
SpaceX plans to launch Flight 11 of its Starship megarocket Monday evening (October 13), and you’ll be able to watch the action live.
Spacecraftthe largest and most powerful rocket ever built, is scheduled to blast off for the 11th time on Monday, October 13, during a 75-minute window that opens at 7:15 p.m. EDT (11:15 p.m. GMT).
The launch will take place from EspaceXThe Starbase site in South Texas. You can watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of the company; coverage will begin approximately 30 minutes before takeoff.
Starship consists of a first stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper stage spacecraft known as Starship, or Ship for short. These two elements are designed to be completely and quickly reusable.
SpaceX believes the vehicle’s unprecedented combination of power and reusability will enable humanity to settle Marcha long-held dream of the company’s founder and CEO Elon Musk.
Starship Flight 11 will look a lot like Vol 10if everything goes as planned. During its most recent launch, which took place on August 26, Super Heavy headed for a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico about 6.5 minutes after liftoff, and Ship did the same in the Indian Ocean about an hour later.
The craft also managed to reignite one of its Raptor engines in space and deploy payloads – eight dummy versions from SpaceX. Star link broadband satellites.
These will also be the main objectives of Flight 11. SpaceX also plans to test a new landing engine configuration for Super Heavy and collect data that will help the ship complete its missions with a return to Starbase, where it will be caught by the launch tower’s “wand” arms.
Super Heavy has already done this on three previous Starship test flights. In fact, the booster that flew Monday is a spaceflight veteran, having led Flight of Spaceship 8 earlier this year.
“For reentry, tiles were removed from Starship to intentionally test vulnerable areas of the vehicle,” SpaceX wrote in a statement. Flight 11 mission description.
“Several of the missing tiles are in areas where the tiles are stuck to the vehicle and do not have a backup ablative layer,” the company added. “To mimic the path a ship will take on future flights back to Starbase, the final phase of Starship’s trajectory on Flight 11 includes a dynamic tilt maneuver and will test subsonic guidance algorithms before a splashdown and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.”
