Yesterday evening, SpaceX moved the Flight 9 Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster to the Starbase launch site.
The preparations to launch a Starship prototype into space for the ninth time are in full swing at SpaceX’s Starbase city in Texas.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s rocket and spaceship launch company performed final tests to verify the launch-readiness of the Flight 9 Starship (Ship 35).
After these tests and data validation, SpaceX confirmed that it’s going to attempt the Flight 9 Starship launch on 27th May. If, for some reason, the first launch window is not utilized, SpaceX has backup launch windows in the following days.
Around 11 PM yesterday, the process of stacking the Flight 9 Starship was completed. After moving both stages to the Starbase launch site, SpaceX mounted Booster 14 onto the Orbital Launch Mount (OLM Pad A) and lifted the upper stage Starship 35 onto the booster (called ‘full stacking’).
The fully stacked Flight 9 Starship is getting ready for the launch and landing test tomorrow. The most recent reports show that the quick disconnect (QD) arm has also been connected to Ship 35 (probably testing mechanism and moving stuff in and out).
The Booster 14 Super Heavy and some of its Raptor engines are going to be reused in the Flight 9 launch. This is the first time a major Starship flight-proven component is getting reused, paving the way for reusability in the future. Since this is Booster 14’s second Starship test flight, it’s also referred to as Booster 14-2 or B14-2 in short.
Flight 9 Landing Plan
The landing plan for Starship Flight 9 is different from the previous two flight tests. In Flight 7 and Flight 8, SpaceX caught the Super Heavy boosters by the launch tower Chopsticks.
In Flight 9, SpaceX is going for a soft water landing of the Booster 14-2 in the Gulf of America (near Starbase, Texas). The upper stage Ship 35 will attempt a soft splashdown landing in the Indian Ocean.
Flight 9 Ship 35 is the third Starship V2 spacecraft prototype. The last two V2 Starships never made a successful reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere. Both of these V2 Starships experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD) in space due to different reasons.
SpaceX has made many improvements in the Flight 9 Starship (Ship 35) to mitigate these issues. It will be an exciting launch test tomorrow. Stay tuned for live updates and follow-up coverage in the coming days.
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