SpaceX has just rolled out a super-heavy Booster 9 launch vehicle to the launch pad at its Starbase base in South Texas. The two magical photos of the installation on the site were posted on Twitter on July 21. Thus, SpaceX demonstrates that it is at the stage of preparation for the second planned test flight.
One of the photos shows how a giant rocket is lowered onto mounts before being launched into Earth’s orbit. Most of its 33 Raptor engines are visible, which are illuminated by an upward-pointing orange light, which gives the impression that they are burning.
In the second picture, Booster 9 is located on top of the mount, and its Raptor engines are hidden by the launch infrastructure. In both photos, the dark sky of South Texas sparkles with hundreds of stars.
Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation transportation system, which the company is developing to deliver cargo and people to the Moon, Mars, and further throughout the Solar System. The fully assembled Starship has so far flown only once, during a test flight on April 20, which aimed to send the booster unit much of the way around the Earth. But shortly after takeoff, several anomalies occurred, and SpaceX sent a self-destruct command, which took effect after four minutes of flight, when the spacecraft and the accelerator were over the Gulf of Mexico.
Booster 9 will be paired with a prototype of the Ship 25 booster for a future test flight, which will have the same goals as the first one. According to the founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, a test mission may begin this summer, but this is provided that no regulatory issues prevent the launch.
Earlier we reported on how China built a replica of the Starship rocket with a vertical landing.
Follow us on Twitter to get the most interesting space news in time
https://twitter.com/ust_magazine
