Serial Number 10 (SN10) was the latest Starship spacecraft to fly high as 10 kilometers. Starship SN10 touched down successfully in contrast to its predecessors SN8 and SN9 which crashed with the ground explosively. But SN10 also didn’t manage to hold a successful ending as it exploded 8 minutes after the landing. However, SN10 is still a successful maneuver and a milestone for Elon Musk and SpaceX.
SN10 launch
SpaceX launched this Starship SN10 prototype at 6:15 p.m. EST from their Boca Chica, Texas site on March 3. As we mentioned before it rose 10 kilometers up into the sky and then return to the pad smoothly 6 minutes and 20 seconds after its takeoff.
“We’ve had a successful soft touchdown on the landing pad that’s capping a beautiful test flight of Starship 10.”, SpaceX principal integration engineer John Insprucker said in the live webcast of the launch.
Explanation on the explosion of SN10
Elon accepts it was his fault why SN10 had Helium on the fuel header tank which mixed with Methane to cause a reaction that turned chemicals into the liquid. According to him, Helium ingestion was a result of a pressurization system. The system was added to the header tank to fix an error that occurred with the previous SN8 prototype.
“SN10 engine was low on thrust due (probably) to partial helium ingestion from fuel header tank. Impact of 10m/s crushed legs & part of skirt. Multiple fixes in work for SN11.”, Elon explained on Twitter.
“If autogenous pressurization had been used, CH4 bubbles would most likely have reverted to liquid. Helium in header was used to prevent ullage collapse from slosh, which happened in prior flight. My fault for approving. Sounded good at the time.” Musk tweeted in subsequently as replies to the Space photographer Austin Barnard and NASASpaceflight’s Chris B – NSF.
Plans on Starship
SpaceX is developing Starship with the ambition of sending humans to Moon, Mars and to help Musk’s goal of humanity become a multiplanet species. They rapidly growing towards that ambition as they already have successors of SN10 at the different stages of assembling. And next Starship prototype SN11 also rolled out to test stand on March 8.
SpaceX making incremental advancements to each of their prototypes after test flights. Starship is one of three contenders that competes to land the next man and first woman on the lunar surface for NASA’s Artemis Program in 2024.
Before that year, SpaceX already planned to have an operational lunar mission “dearMoon”. The mission is planned to be held in 2023. Japanese fashion retail billionaire Yusaku Maezawa already booked a seat with other 8 passengers to fly around the moon on Starship.
When will SN11 happen?
SpaceX used to test their Starship prototypes one per month as a habit. So, we would be able to see the launch of SN11 within a month. But some experts in the space industry estimate SN11 could be ready to fly as soon as next week. SpaceX engineers rapidly fixing their issues with legs, thrusters, and landing process to fly SN11 ASAP.
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