Starship SN10 fire tests reveal a problem with one of the engines – SpaceX will replace it
SpaceX has conducted fire tests of three Raptor engines of the next prototype of the Starship spacecraft, designed to launch at an altitude of more than 10 km – the chances of launching before the end of the week are higher. The engines fired up today at 2:03 am Moscow time and ran for a few seconds.
The previous fire test attempt was interrupted just before loading the fuel into the spacecraft about a day earlier. SpaceX was able to overcome the identified problems quickly. However, SN10 can still repeat the fate of the SN9 prototype, which underwent various fire tests for four weeks before finally being allowed to fly.
It is difficult to say how successful the test was. Long-distance observations make it impossible to understand whether everything went smoothly or whether there were some problems. SpaceX Executive Director Elon Musk commented on the past fire tests: “One of the engines behaved suspiciously, so we are replacing it. ” Apparently, SpaceX will have to conduct another test burn of the SN10 engines.
This will be the third Starship launch to an altitude of 10 km with an attempted return and jet landing. All stages of previous tests of SN8 and SN9 went well, except for the notorious landing – prototypes crashed on their landing sites, exploding with bright fireballs.
By the way, we already wrote that SpaceX, based on the SN8 and SN9 tests, made improvements to Starship SN10, thanks to which the chance of a successful landing has doubled: according to Musk’s estimate, now it is about 60%. During the launch of SN8, a company executive said the odds of success are one in three.
These test flights are an important part of the development of the Starship project, which SpaceX sees as a means to make possible the colonization of Mars, simplify flights to the moon, and transport people from one part of the globe to the opposite in literally an hour. The final version of Starship will receive six Raptor engines (versus three for current prototypes). The system will consist of two fully recoverable parts: the ship itself 50 meters high and a huge 70-meter Super Heavy rocket, which will receive about 30 Raptor engines.
