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SpaceX boss Elon Musk shared his predictions for the upcoming test flight of the Starship rocket in Texas. SpaceX is due to conduct Starship Flight 5 soon, and according to Musk, the test could take place late next month or early September, depending on Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval. For Flight 5, SpaceX has raised the stakes quite a bit, as it will attempt to grab the 232-foot-tall Super Heavy booster with the launch tower’s gripping arms. These arms are responsible for stacking the Starship second stage on the booster during pre-launch preparations, and Musk believes there is a 50% chance of successfully capturing the turret.
SpaceX could fly Starship Flight 5 in late August or early September, Musk says
Musk shared the latest details about Starship Flight 5 during a video conference earlier today. He began by sharing that the test flight could take place in “two or three weeks” subject to FAA license which may arrive on “end of August” as early as possible and may also continue until the beginning of September. Commenting on what he considers a success for this test, Musk emphasized that SpaceX “would like to catch soft. . on. . booster in mechazilla’s hands“This sounds”kind of crazy” due to the size of the booster, he added, but he believes it is “got a decent chance to work“, which may take a few tries before it works well.
SpaceX’s other goal is to test its heat shield for the Starship second stage. Its fourth test flight was the first time this craft made a soft landing on water, although its flap caught fire. As part of its pre-Flight 5 fixes, SpaceX refreshed all of the craft’s tiles, and landing precision will be another goal since the Flight 4 craft missed its waypoint due to a flap failure.
Ensuring that the heat shield is working and protecting the ship is critical not only for the test, but also for safety. Musk said that on the fourth flight, SpaceX “lost a lot of heat shield tiles,” making landing quite difficult due to the risk of the craft either breaking up on re-entry or landing in the wrong place. If any of these things happen, “there’s some possibility of debris hitting, um, you know, damaging property or. . or peoplehe warned.
Because of these complexities, SpaceX aims to “at least three successful ship landings” before attempting to return the ship to the launch site. The heat shield for Flight 5’s ship is “vastly upgraded, um, I’d say at least twice as good, well, some cases, like infinitely better,” the executive shared. There are also “secondary heat shield behind the primary heat shield,” Musk revealed as SpaceX pulls out all the stops to ensure the craft survives fully intact after re-entry during Starship Flight 5.
The new heat shield and the progress made with the Super Heavy booster, which also made its first successful soft splash down during Flight 4, led Musk to believe that there is “probably has a fifty percent chance of catching the booster.” For a ship, the odds of its heat shield remaining intact are “probably, probably, a better than fifty percent, maybe sixty, seventy percent chance that the ship’s heat shield will remain intact on this upcoming flight, assuming nothing else goes wrong.”
SpaceX static fired its Flight 5 Starship upper stage as part of preparations earlier this week. It was the first static fire on a ship in a new flame trench near the launch pad. The ship is now returning to the assembly facilities and future tests could see, among other things, a full wetsuit rehearsal.
A slow-motion view of the six Raptor engines on Flight 5 Starship during static fire pic.twitter.com/5395Vmq2j4
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 27, 2024
