THE HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT BLOG: From the Space Shuttle to Beyond: Photos of the Day: SpaceX Conducts a Test Flight of Its Newest Starship Prototype in South Texas...

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Photos of the Day: SpaceX Conducts a Test Flight of Its Newest Starship Prototype in South Texas...

The Starship SN5 prototype rocket lifts off from the SpaceX test facility at Boca Chica Beach in Texas...on August 4, 2020.

SpaceX

About six hours ago, SpaceX successfully conducted a 150-meter (492-feet) hop of its Starship SN5 (Serial No. 5) prototype rocket at its launch site in Boca Chica Beach, Texas. The nearly one-minute flight took place almost a year after SpaceX's previous prototype, the Starhopper, made its own flawless hop (also to a height of 150 meters) from the company's test facility near the Gulf of Mexico. Today's historic demonstration follows months of setbacks as earlier Starship iterations (SN1 to SN3) were destroyed at the launch pad during pressurization tests, and even fuel leakage following a successful static fire (SN4).

SpaceX will continue to conduct additional low-altitude hops to smooth out the launch process, before it finally moves to much higher flights (to an altitude of possibly 20 kilometers, or 12 miles) with Starships flying on three methane-fueled Raptor engines...not a single thruster like what was used on the Starhopper and SN5 today. Once operational, Starship will launch into deep space using a total of 31 Raptor engines on its Super Heavy first stage booster. It will only be a few years before this becomes a reality.

With the Gulf of Mexico as a backdrop, the Starship SN5 prototype rocket is about to reach the highest point of its 150-meter (492-feet) hop above the SpaceX test facility at Boca Chica Beach in Texas...on August 4, 2020.