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Wrapping up a jam packed week for American spaceflight, SpaceX has shifted its launch date for the fourth Starship test flight forward by a day. Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, is being developed in Texas. As part of its development, SpaceX regularly conducts test flights, and the last Starship launch took place earlier this year. It saw the first phase of the test, i.e., stage separation and reaching space, complete successfully, but the second phase, which covers booster touchdown and atmospheric reentry of the second stage Starship, wasn't quite as successful. According to SpaceX, the fourth Starship test flight will focus on these objectives.
SpaceX Set To Test Super Heavy Soft Splashdown, Starship Atmospheric Reentry During IFT-4
Ahead of the upcoming test on Thursday, SpaceX has been busy working with the IFT-4 Starship test in Texas. Footage from local media shows that the firm has stacked and destroyed the second stage Starship and Super Heavy booster multiple times. The latest developments have seen SpaceX install the flight termination system for the rocket. This system is nonnegotiable for a rocket launch, and it is responsible for destroying the rocket in case of an anomaly during the test.
Before it can fly the full Starship stack for the fourth time in Texas, SpaceX has to receive the FAA's license approval As of Sunday, this approval is still pending, but the fact that the FTS has been installed on Starship means that the firm is confident in securing the FAA's go ahead.
In its pre launch update, SpaceX also shared details for the key tests it ran on Starship IFT-3. Since the second stage Starship is also NASA's lander of choice for the Artemis lunar landings, SpaceX is also running tests for the NASA missions with each Starship flight.
The latest bit of details from SpaceX add that a "successful propellant transfer demonstration" during IFT-3 will aid the ship's development for NASA's missions. To send Starship to the Moon, SpaceX will have to fuel the rocket in space, and this "test provided valuable data for eventual ship-to-ship propellant transfers that will enable missions like returning astronauts to the Moon under NASA’s Artemis program" according to the update.
For the fourth test flight, SpaceX's primary objectives will be to execute a " landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico with the Super Heavy booster" and to achieve "a controlled entry of Starship." The second bit should prove to be more technologically complex as it will rely on Starship's heat shield functioning without flaw to protect it from atmospheric forces during re-entry.
The Super Heavy's inter stage hot fire stage separation ring will be jettisoned during flight to reduce the rocket's weight for splashdown. This ring is a late addition to Starship's design, and it absorbs the force from the second stage's six engines during stage separation. SpaceX plans to eventually catch the Super Heavy booster with its launch tower for reuse, and a soft landing aims to demonstrate that the rocket can slow down sufficiently to be 'caught' without destroying the precious launch tower.
The Raptor engines will be a key watch item on the fourth flight. SpaceX's engines are among the most complex in the world, and they have demonstrated reliability problems in multiple tests. However, Raptor performance has improved over time, and while it's unclear if this improvement is due to design changes or less power, successive Starship tests have seen most, if not all, engines perform nominally most of the time.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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