As the entire world awaits the launch of SpaceX Starship super heavy, the commercial aerospace agency scrubs the space launch. The space launch is supposed to commence today April 17 from the SpaceX Starbase facility on Sout Texas’ Gulf Coast, United States. However, this mission was canceled 9 minutes before the countdown commences. SpaceX announces that the reason for scrubbing the mission was due to the fault of the pressurization system on Starship’s first stage.
Since the issue could not permit today’s launch, the SpaceX mission control team decided to transition the flight into a wet dress rehearsal. This rehearsal enabled the team to work on the starship’s preflight procedures and improve their knowledge bout the rocket and its systems. But the team is confident that what they learned from this process will enable them to achieve great success in a future launch.
“The point of the countdown is to allow the teams to progress that T-zero time in a coordinated fashion and really to unveil any issues prior to the ignition sequence. So, the countdown did its job today,” said SpaceX’s Kate Tice during today’s launch coverage.
When Will SpaceX Make the Next Launch Attempt of Its Starship super heavy?
SpaceX announced that they will wait for about 48 hours before making the next launch attempt. Even though a new launch time is yet to be announced, the SpaceX team of engineers is confident that it will happen anytime soon. Elon Musk, the CEO and Founder of SpaceX tweeted the actual cause of today’s mission scrub during the countdown.
“A pressurant valve appears to be frozen, so unless it starts operating soon, no launch today,” he wrote. While addressing the next time the test flight will be possible, Elon Musk tweeted. “Learned a lot today, now offloading propellant, retrying in a few days.”
This implies, that we should be expecting the launch of the most powerful spaceship of our time in only a few days from now. SpaceX has been working on the development of Starship space vehicles that will carry humans and cargo to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The gigantic deep space vehicles are up made of huge first-stage boosters known as Super Heavy and an upper-stage vehicle called the Starship.
As both vehicles were stacked together, they collectively stand 394 feet (120 meters) tall. At this height, the space vehicle is higher than any other spaceship ever built. The booster’s 33 raptor engines which produce about 16.5 million pounds of thrust during liftoff made the space vehicle the most powerful spaceship the most sophisticated rocket ever built-in history. In fact, upon its launch, it will break the record with nearly twice the amount of thrust as NASA’s Space Launch System megarocket, which currently holds the record.
Starship will also be the most powerful rocket in history when it takes flight. Its 33 first-stage Raptor engines will generate 16.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, nearly twice as much as the current record holder, NASA’s Space Launch System megarocket. Both the booster and the starship are designed to be fully reusable. Elon Musk hopes to send humans to Mars and commence with the plans of building a civilization on the red planet. The starship can help Musk to accomplish his goals and ambition.
Conclusion
The future plans of the SpaceX rocket highly depend on the outcome of the forthcoming orbital test flight. Once SpaceX engineers successfully fix the fault on the pressurization system on Starship’s first stage, we should be expecting the gigantic space vehicle to be on its way to space. What do you think about the postponement of this orbital test flight?
