Starship: éxito en su tercer lanzamiento y ahora más cerca de la Luna.
1Starship: successful in its third launch and now closer to the Moon.
The third takeoff of Starship, the largest rocket ever built by humans, took off from Starbase, a little after 2:25 p.m. The result was not very comfortable because, although the takeoff was a success, SpaceX was forced to give up the second stage during its reentry.
The takeoff was carried out, as in all previous ones, from Starbase, the SpaceX facilities in Boca Chica, Texas. It is at this site where the company owned by Elon Musk has the necessary infrastructure to assemble and take off these rockets.
SpaceX had a 110-minute launch window that opened at 07:00 local time, but starting at 12:04 CET the company began to announce some delays as a result of vessels located within the perimeter limited by security measures. security.
The first two demonstrations in orbit have been successful. The first was the opening and closing of the ship's cargo bay, an operation that gives way to the use of this ship as a vehicle to put massive quantities of Starlink satellites, the American company's constellation of telecommunications satellites, into orbit.
The second operation was a fuel transfer between the ship's tanks. This maneuver is one of the operations that the ship will need to replicate for its orbital refueling. This maneuver also seems to have gone correctly.
Until then everything has been more or less correct, but the first problem has come in the restart test of the ship's raptor engines, which has not occurred. This process was not relevant for the flight of the ship, which was already on its orbital path, heading to the waters of the Indian Ocean.
Now reentry was another sensitive point since it was not clear if the ship's heat shield would hold intact. SpaceX has lost contact with the ship during the reentry phase, which leads us to believe, in the absence of official confirmation, that the vehicle has been lost because it could not withstand reentry.
The first attempt to orbit this colossus failed due to the failure of its engines. The fraction of the first stage's raptor engines that failed was too high to make the massive vehicle reach orbit (or even reach the "frontier" of space).
The failures that led to the second attempt failing were somewhat more complex, as Starship reached the separation phase with Super Heavy. From there, each stage ended up destroyed for different reasons.
Now we just have to wait for news of the third attempt, as apparently the ship is lost, let's hope that's not the case and have news as soon as possible.