The last ship of Spacex ship has breathed once more.
The company carried out a “static fire” test with a higher stage of the spacecraft in its Starbase site in southern Texas on Monday (May 12).
Spacex turned on the six The 171 -foot high raptor engines (52 meter counting) last the test, which lasts about 60 seconds.
It was the third static fire for this particular vehicle, which “is experiencing the final preparations for the ninth flight test,” according to a Spacex Publication of Tesday (13) in X that shared a video and photos of the test.
The company has not yet announced an objective date for flight 9, but it could happen in the coming weeks. Spacex has already made a static fire with the reinforcement of the first stage that will be launched in the mission.
The spacecraft, which measures 403.5 feet (123 meters) high when it is full of stacking, is ever built. Its two elements, the super heavy reinforcement and the spacecraft (or simply send) the upper stage, are designed to be completely reusable.
Spacex believes that the starship force combination of strength and reuse will make Mars Settlement, a long hero’s dream of the company’s founder, Elon Musk, economically feasible, finally.
Starship has eight test flights to his credit, two or what has happened this year.
The two 2025 flights, which took off in January and March, respectively, had similar results. Super Heavy served well and returned to Starbase for a successful capture of the “stick” arms of the launch tower. But the upper stage of the ship had problems both times, exploiting less than 10 minutes on the flight.
The long -term ship on Monday, static fire seemed to go well, but we will soon see if Spacex has solved the problems with the great upper stage.
