SpaceX recently sent its Starship’s SN8 prototype to the highest altitude of its from the South Texas launch site on December 9. It was a 7-minute test flown until it failed to land in the ground and exploded. However, the SN8 mission was successful. SpaceX CEO praised his team, “all the data we needed. Mars, here we come!!” with a tweet. If you have no idea what is SN8 or Starship, read All things you need to know about Starship and its SN8 launch.
SN8 reached an altitude of 12.5 km and then it did a horizontal descent. But when it flipped back to the vertical, things started to go wrong. But it was successfully flipped. Then the prototype landed with speed and promptly exploded like a bomb. “Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD,” Musk explained the reason for the crash on Twitter. At the landing, only one has worked well out of 3 raptor engines.
Nonetheless, SpaceX has other prototypes of Starship which has already been built. The next in the line is Serial Number 9, or simply SN9.
SpaceX Starship SN9
SN9 is ready to fly in a similar attempt to SN8. But before that, SN9 will go through tests in the next weeks. Firstly, SpaceX planned to rollout the rocket to the launch pad last Monday (December 14). But unfortunately, on Friday, December 11 early morning, the SN9 prototype has collapsed onto its side inside the Texas assembly building’s high bay where it was placed. Its front right aerodynamic flap was damaged from a high bay contact incident. Thanks to the careful work of the SpaceX team, SN9 has stabilized. It seems a new flap will need to be fitted if SN9 is slated to fly again and they expected to replace the damaged flap with a new one.
According to the latest highway closure announcement in Cameron County, Texas, SpaceX is scheduled to conduct major work on Thursday (December 17) from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm (CST), they also scheduled a back-up date on Friday (December 18) at the same time which implies SpaceX intends to work on Starship SN9 and could move the prototype out of the high bay with a massive crane in order to fix it or possibly move it to the launchpad.
However, SpaceX is yet to confirm when we could see the vehicle flying. Besides SN8, SpaceX has already is also building SN10, and even SN11 as successors for SN8. Inventho is the website talking about Science, Technology, Space, and Inspirational stories. Stay tuned with us by subscribing to our website or Facebook page.
