SpaceXs Starship gets FAA approval for third test flight – The Washington Post

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday granted SpaceX a license that allows the company to launch its massive Starship rocket again, possibly as early as 8 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, though weather at its South Texas facilities could force a delay.

The flight would be the third attempt to reach orbit for the worlds most powerful rocket, a towering two-stage vehicle that NASA intends to use to land astronauts on the moon. During the first test flight, in April of last year, the vehicle blew up its launchpad, started tumbling after liftoff and eventually exploded. SpaceX which follows an iterative approach to the development of its systems, allowing them to fail and then trying again quickly flew a second attempt in November that showed improvement, though the rocket self-destructed before reaching orbit.

The vehicle, collectively called Starship, comprised the Super Heavy booster and a spacecraft that sits on top. It is designed to be fully reusable, landing back at its launch site. NASA is investing about $4 billion into the system and intends to use it for the first human landings on the moon since the Apollo era.

In a statement, SpaceX said that the 110-minute launch window would open at 8 a.m. Eastern and that its webcast would go live about 30 minutes before.

On Starships last flight, upgrades to the launchpad, including a water suppression system, allowed it to survive the violence of takeoff, when all of the rockets 33 first-stage engines successfully ignited. The vehicle made it through stage separation, and the upper-stage engines fired as well. But as the booster started to ignite 13 of its engines to fly the rocket back to Earth, one engine failed, quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly, the phrase SpaceX uses to describe a loss of vehicle. The spacecraft was lost after a leak led to a fire and its autonomous onboard flight termination system destroyed the vehicle.

After the flight, the FAA oversaw SpaceXs investigation and said in February that it had accepted the companys report. As a result, the FAA required SpaceX to complete 17 corrective actions, including hardware redesigns, updates to engine-control algorithms and the installation of fire protection measures.

SpaceX said that upgrades derived from the flight test will debut on the next Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. It added in a subsequent statement that each of these flight tests continue to be just that: a test. They arent occurring in a lab or on a test stand but are putting flight hardware in a flight environment to maximize learning.

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SpaceXs Starship gets FAA approval for third test flight - The Washington Post