Ahead of the fourth Starship test flight and after stacking the second stage Starship spaceship on the Super Heavy booster in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX conducted a wet dress rehearsal of its rockets earlier today. Before a test launch, SpaceX fills up the two rockets with their propellants to evaluate their performance ahead of flight. These tests allow it to certify the rockets' multiple systems to ensure that they will be able to handle the high propellant pressures on the day of flight. A fuel up, which might also be a wet dress rehearsal, is not indicative of an imminent launch since SpaceX has to make last minute changes on the rocket before flight.
SpaceX Moves Forward With Fourth Starship Test Flight Campaign
Footage from local media in Boca Chica, Texas showed SpaceX starting to load up its rockets with methane and oxygen early in the morning. Due to Starship's size and the temperature of the propellants, it isn't hard to determine when SpaceX starts to fill the rockets.
For today's filling test, the first signs of a propellant load appeared fifteen minutes before 9 a.m. local time in Texas, with the characteristic frost starting to become visible on the rocket. Ahead of the condensation, SpaceX had already started to vent propellants out of its filling lines and other equipment.
Remarkably, the two Starships were filled with fuel in less than an hour. Starship is the world's largest rocket and SpaceX has to load it up with thousands of gallons of propellants for the flight and rehearsals like today's. SpaceX typically confirms on social media whether it has run a wet dress rehearsal, and the firm's latest post on X confirmed the wet dress rehearsal as well.
Today's test sees SpaceX pick up the pace with Starship testing in Texas. Momentum has been relatively slow in May, as testing has focused on the rockets for the fifth flight. At the same time, SpaceX has also dismantled a sub orbital test pad at the site in Boca Chica, after it saw a second stage Starship planned to fly on IFT-5 fire up its engines as part of a static fire test.
For the fourth test flight, SpaceX's biggest focus will be the second stage Starship. Starship IFT-3 saw remarkable views from the second stage after its heat shield started to glow hot red during atmospheric reentry. However, reentry was also the final stage of the test, as SpaceX soon lost contact with its ship as it encountered the high heat and forces in the atmosphere.
SpaceX's Elon Musk, who spent a busy weekend in Indonesia for his firm's Starlink satellite internet service, shared details for the fourth Starship test on X. According to him, the primary goal of IFT-4 will be "getting through max reentry heating," which is one of the most dangerous periods of a spaceship's flight. Starship uses thousands of heat shield tiles on its second stage, and keeping all of them in one place on the rocket has proven to be difficult.
IFT-3 saw the tiles regularly fall off the rocket, and Musk was appreciative of the complexity in his X post. He added that "no one has ever succeeded in creating a fully reusable heat shield," and even the well known Space Shuttle had to spend months for its refurbishment.
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.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
