Elon Musk‘s rocket manufacturing company SpaceX conducted the second static fire test for its Super heavy Booster 9 on Friday evening with positive outcomes.
What Happened: The booster static fire successfully lit all 33 Raptor engines. Two of the engines, however, failed to run for the entire duration of the test, SpaceX said in a post while congratulating its team on the ‘exciting’ milestone. The test produced about 7.9 million lbf of thrust, the company added.
CEO Elon Musk also shared the excitement via a post that read, “Successful Starship Super Heavy Booster static fire!”
This was the second Booster 9 static fire. During the first static fire test held earlier this month, four of the engines shut down prematurely.
Why It Matters: Starship is a fully reusable transportation system expected to carry people and cargo to orbit, Mars, or the moon and includes the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy rocket. SpaceX conducted the first test launch of Starship on April 20. The rocket exploded in less than four minutes after take-off.
Last week, Musk said that the much-awaited second flight attempt would happen soon. Musk has previously estimated a 60% probability for the next flight to reach orbit, contingent on the success of stage separation.
Starship is key to realizing Musk’s dreams of making life “multi-planetary.” In 2020, he said that he would send a million people to Mars by 2050 aboard Starship. Last month, he even envisioned 50 rockets flying every 3 days on average and enabling enough payload to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.
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Photo by Sundry Photography on Shutterstock
Read More: Elon Musk Reflects On SpaceX's Remarkable 4-Year Journey: Starhopper To Starship
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