SpaceX Fires Up Starship Super Heavy Booster 9 in Texas

SpaceX Fires Up Starship Super Heavy Booster 9 in Texas

[Ignition starts at ~2 minute and 20 second mark] SpaceX conducted a static-fire test of their Starship Super heavy booster 9 on Aug. 6, 2023. The test was conducted at the Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX briefly ignited the booster's 33 Raptor engines while anchored to the orbital launch mount at its Starbase site in South Texas.

Not all of the engines performed perfectly; four of them shut down prematurely, SpaceX representatives said during a webcast of today's test. 

"A big congrats to the Starship team for getting through today's test," SpaceX's John Insprucker said during today's webcast. "That moves us another step closer to our next flight test."

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket—collectively referred to as Starship—represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry up to 150 metric tonnes to Earth orbit reusable, and up to 250 metric tonnes expendable.

Starship is essential to both SpaceX’s plans to deploy its next-generation Starship system as well as for NASA, which will use a lunar lander version of Starship for landing astronauts on the moon during the Artemis III mission through the Human Landing System (HLS) program.

Key Starship Parameters:

Height: 120m/394ft

Diameter: 9m/30ft

Payload to LEO: 100 – 250+ t (orbit dependent)

Download the Free Starship User Guide (PDF): 

https://www.spacex.com/media/starship_users_guide_v1.pdf

Video Credit: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)

Duration: 7 minutes, 45 seconds

Release Date: Aug. 6, 2023

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