The preflight testing of SpaceX’s SN9 Starship is currently active, and the launch might happen very soon. The aim of the starship is to take humans to Moon and Mars. If the test flight of the SN9 is successful, then Elon’s goal to take humans to Mars by 2030 might become real. The latest SN9 starship will be the successor of the SN8, which crashed while landing back after the test flight. Well, I am sure SpaceX has learned from its mistakes, and the SN9 will most probably be a success and another step towards Mars.
SN8 a failure and a success!
Just some time back SpaceX tested the SN8 which crashed while landing back. Though the operation was a failure but it wasn’t all bad. This was the first prototype and nearly made through the entire testing phase. The starship went as high as 40,000 feet in South Texas by using its triple Raptor engines. The rocket was also built strong enough to do a bellyflop. This shows the sheer capability of the engineers at SpaceX. After the crash proper investigation was done by Musk and his team on what went wrong. And later, telling us about it Musk said, “the explosion was the consequence of having the fuel head tank pressure low”.
SpaceX’s SN9 Starship
Once the preflight testing of the SN9 is done it will go through a test flight. The news regarding the flight testing was confirmed by the beach closure announcements in South Texas. Presently, SpaceX is doing its preflight testing between 8 am to 8 pm. This testing is meant to assess the capability of the starship to take a flight. The scheduled dates for the pretesting of SpaceX’s SN9 starship are from 29th Dec to 6th Jan.
Taking about the testing, the two main tests are cryogenic pressurization and static firing test. The former one is done by filling the rocket with chilled nitrogen. While the latter is done by the static firing of the three raptor engines that it has. If everything goes well then in early 2021 the SN9 will be doing its first test flight.
SpaceX targets to build a space ready starship by 2023. What are your thoughts on SpaceX’s SN9 Starship? And do you think the test flight will be successful this time? Do let us know in the comments below. Also, if you found our content informative and interesting do like and share it with your friends.
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