FAA deletes SpaceX to start his 9th Starship Super Heavy Rocket, while the Flight 8 examination continues to continue.

A return to Flight for SpaceX’s Starship program could only be a holiday weekend after the Federal Aviation Administration gave the company the kindness.

In a declaration published on Thursday, May 22, the regulatory authority said that SpaceX “implemented all corrective measures in response to the misfortune observed in flight 8 in March. Similar to flight 7 in January, the ship’s upper was missed after the ship was separated and dissolved over the Turks and Caicos Islands.

“With the return of the Starship vehicle for flight determination, Starship Flight 9 is approved for the start,” said the FAA in an explanation. “The FAA notes that SpaceX meets all strict security, environmental and other license requirements.”

When considering how the Starship Start could resume, SpaceX would either have waited until the misfortune examination was completed by flight 8 and completed by the FAA or requested a decision on public security. As with the missions of flight 7 and flight 8, SpaceX opted for the latter.

“In this provision, the FAA takes several factors into account, including but not limited to the type of misfortune, the performance of security-critical systems and the generation of unplanned debris,” said the FAA. “Before returning to the flight determination, the FAA must find that a system, procedure or a procedure in connection with the misfortune have no influence on public security or another aspect of the operator license.”

On May 14, SpaceX submitted his flight 8 -mixer report to the FAA and a day later the agency announced its approval of license modifications for Starship Flight 9 and an increase in the starting processes from five to 25 starts per year at Starbase.

In addition to the expansion of aircraft and seafaring areas for the upcoming flight, the FAA found on May 15 that it had not yet granted a permit for the start.

The FAA explained that on Wednesday, May 21st, SpaceX had given it a termination that it would be granted a return to the flight determination. In the explanation of Spaceflight Now, a FAA spokesman confirmed that the return to the flight “is based on public security” and added that “the misfortune test remains”.

“The FAA continues to check SpaceX’s misfortune before it can be closed,” said the spokesman.

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, said he would talk about the Starship program before the start that would be streamed live on his social media website X. The specific date and the time of the lecture were not announced publicly.

Learn from mistakes

In a blog post published on May 23, SpaceX describes what it went wrong during flight 8 mission.

With regard to the anomaly of the upper level in the upper level, SpaceX said about 5.5 minutes after the ascent “A flash was observed near a mid -engine of the mid -engine,” followed by an energetic event that led to the loss of the engine. “A video that was still leaked by a Starship Onboard camera that was published shortly after the mission that one Motor nozzle was completely missing.

“Immediately afterwards, the remaining two Center Raptor Engines and one of the Raptor vacuum motors were closed and the vehicle control authority lost,” wrote SpaceX. “The telemetry of the vehicle was recently received about nine and a half minutes after the flight or a little more than two minutes after the first flash observation. At that time, all engines had closed.”

SpaceX said that the autonomous flight safety system, which is also called a flight termination system or briefly, was healthy when mission controller lost communication with the rocket. Engineers believe that the destruction system was triggered in the loss of communication.

“The most likely cause of the loss of the spaceship was identified as hardware failure in one of the Center Raptor Engines at the upper level, which led to accidental blast mixture and ignition,” said SpaceX. “Extensive soil tests have been taken since the flight test to better understand the failure, including more than 100 long-term traptor shots in the McGregor test facility of SpaceX.”

SpaceX set out that the problems that caused the anomaly during the flight during the flight “” were “clear” of what happened during flight 7, even though the timing was quite similar.

“The reductions set up after the seventh flight test of the starship to remedy the harmonious reaction and flamelessness of the ship’s loft section worked on flight 8,” said SpaceX.

With regard to Raptor hardware errors, which led to the death of S34, SpaceX said that “motors at the upper level of the starship are given additional preload on important joints, a new nitrogen storage system and improvements in the drivel drainage system.”

“Future upgrades to the Starship will introduce the Raptor 3 engine, which includes additional reliability improvements to tackle the error mechanism,” said SpaceX.

Take three

Starship Flight 9 is SpaceX’s third attempt to demonstrate the complete skills of his Starship Block 2 design in a complete flight profile.

The lion’s share of the mission goals for the upper level, the tail number S35, corresponds to the two previous missions and will occur in the mission profile at about the same times.

This includes the intention of using eight starlink simulators (similar to the size of the Starlink satellites of version 3), to re-move one of the raptor engines in space and demonstrate a series of heat shading experiments in order to protect future variant versions of Starship from the strict starts and finally a return to pretension.

“During the re -entry, a considerable number of tiles from the spaceship to the areas in need of protection were removed,” wrote SpaceX about the upcoming mission. “Several metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, test alternative materials for protecting the spaceship during re -entry.”

Starship is also again equipped with functional fishing fittings to collect data about your structural and thermal skills. SpaceX has not said which mission a Catch demonstration of the spaceship contains.

For the first time back

One of the most important progress presented during the Starship Flight 9 is the use of a mostly tried -and -tested booster. This would be the first time that SpaceX is trying to start a super heavy booster for the second time, compared to the 416 flights previously flown Falcon booster.

The first stage, the rear number B14, was previously used for Starship Flight 7 and is reused 29 of its 33 original raptor engines.

“In addition to reuse milestone, Super Heavy will fly a variety of experiments that aim to generate data in order to improve the performance and reliability for future boosters,” said SpaceX. “The findings from the first renovation and the subsequent performance of the flight in flight enable faster turnarounds of future reflections, since progress is made on vehicles that do not require practical maintenance between the starts.”

The flight profile of the booster is also changed for flight 9. Instead of trying to record the booster again at the start, B14 will address a splashdown offshore in South Texas in the Golf.

Previously, SpaceX orders the booster to carry out a controlled flip maneuver in order to control its direction more precisely before the boostback burns. It blocks several ventilation openings on the hot staging ring to control the trajectory.

“Earlier Booster flips went in a randomized direction, based on a slide of direction from small differences in the thrust from the engines of the lower level of the upper level of the Starship,” wrote SpaceX. “By freaking in a well -known direction, fewer exercises have to be kept in reserve, so that the use of more powerful enables additional payload mass for the orbit during the ascent.”

SpaceX said it intends to fly the booster during the relegation compared to previous missions at a higher angle of attack. It wants to intentionally increase the atmospheric air resistance in order to reduce the descent speed that would enable an initial land fire that uses fewer drives.

SpaceX does not detail how much girlfriend could be saved with this maneuver. However, it means that the data from this approach will help with future block 1 versions of the Super Heavy Booster and in future versions.

During the landing race, SpaceX will deliberately not illuminate one of the three middle motors and instead call up a motor from the middle ring to complete the burn. The combustion is concluded with only the two middle motors.