EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2030 GMT) after delay.
SpaceX’s Starship SN11 test rocket at Boca Chica, Texas. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX scrubbed the launch of its next Starship test rocket Friday afternoon, with the next opportunity for the atmospheric test flight expected Monday. SpaceX plans to launch and land the rocket at company’s South Texas development complex after losing three previous prototypes in explosions.
The privately-developed Starship test vehicle — designated SN11 — will be the fourth full-size Starship vehicle to take off from SpaceX’s test site in Cameron County, Texas. Like three previous Starship test flights in December, February, and earlier this month, the prototype will attempt to fly to an altitude of about 33,000 feet, or 10,000 meters, before returning to the ground for rocket-assisted vertical landing.
SN11 is the latest in a series of prototypes for SpaceX’s next-generation launch vehicle that will eventually stand nearly 400 feet, or about 120 meters, tall and carry more 220,000 pounds, or 100 metric tons, of cargo to low Earth orbit. That’s more lift capacity than than any rocket in the world.
With life support systems and in-space refueling, the Starship could carry heavy cargo and people beyond Earth orbit. SpaceX is of of three industrial teams with a NASA contract to design and refine concepts for a human-rated lunar lander for the space agency’s Artemis moon program.
The Starship program is intended to eventually ferry passengers and supplies to deep space destinations to Mars, according to Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO.
The Starship vehicle will comprise the upper segment of the huge orbital rocket, which SpaceX also calls the Starship. The first stage booster is named the Super Heavy. Both vehicles are designed to be fully reusable.
SpaceX confirmed plans for the Starship SN11 test flight Friday on its website, but Musk tweeted Friday afternoon that the company was “standing down” from the launch “until probably Monday.”
“Additional checkouts are needed. Doing our best to land & fully recover,” Musk tweeted.
The company says it plans to provide a live video stream of the Starship launch and landing.
SpaceX test-fired the Starship rocket on its launch mount Friday morning, clearing the way for final launch preparations before managers eventually called off the test flight.
The 164-foot-tall (50-meter) Starship SN11 vehicle will be powered at liftoff by three methane-fueled Raptor engines producing more than a million pounds of thrust at full power.
After climbing away from the launch pad, the Starship will shut down its three Raptor engines in sequence before the rocket reaches the apex of its trajectory.
“SN11 will perform a propellant transition to the internal header tanks, which hold landing propellant, before reorienting itself for reentry and a controlled aerodynamic descent,” SpaceX wrote on its website.
“The Starship prototype will descend under active aerodynamic control, accomplished by independent movement of two forward and two aft flaps on the vehicle,” SpaceX wrote. “All four flaps are actuated by an onboard flight computer to control Starship’s attitude during flight and enable precise landing at the intended location.
“SN11’s Raptor engines will then reignite as the vehicle attempts a landing flip maneuver immediately before touching down on the landing pad adjacent to the launch mount.”
The entire flight is expected to last between six and seven minutes. This time, SpaceX hopes the Starship vehicle survives intact.
A hard landing on an otherwise-successful Dec. 9 Starship test flight was caused by low pressure from header tanks feeding the vehicle’s Raptor engines for the critical burn just before touchdown, and one of the Raptor engines failed to reignite for the landing burn on a test flight Feb. 2.
The SN10 rocket achieved the first soft landing of a full-size Starship vehicle at the end of a March 3 test flight, but the rocket exploded minutes later
Despite the explosion, the Starship SN10 test flight appeared to be a major achievement for SpaceX’s Starship test flight program. SpaceX aims to build on that experience with the SN11 flight.
The first Super Heavy booster has been stacked inside a high bay at SpaceX’s complex at Boca Chica, Texas. Credit: Elon Musk
The early focus of SpaceX’s Starship program has been on building infrastructure at the Boca Chica test site, located on the Texas Gulf Coast near the U.S.-Mexico border. Earlier this month, SpaceX completed stacking of the first Super Heavy booster, which Musk said is a “production pathfinder.”
SpaceX assembled the first Super Heavy test article, named BN1, to help learn how to build and transport the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) first stage, which itself is as tall as a Falcon 9 rocket used by SpaceX for operational satellite launches.
The second Super Heavy booster, which is being fabricated but is not yet assembled, is designed to fly, presumably on a suborbital test launch, according to Musk.
SpaceX aims to launch the first fully-stacked Super Heavy and Starship in on an orbital launch attempt from South Texas in July. “That’s our goal,” Musk tweeted.
An orbital launch attempt by July is an aggressive goal, like many schedules outlined by SpaceX’s hard-charging founder and chief executive.
The orbital version of the Starship vehicle will have six Raptor engines, including three engines with enlarged bell-shaped nozzles optimized for higher efficiency in the vacuum of space. The orbital-class Starship will also have a heat shield to survive re-entry back into the atmosphere.
During an orbital launch attempt, the reusable Super Heavy will detach from the Starship — which acts as both an upper stage and in-space transporter — and come back to Earth for a vertical landing. The Starship will continue into orbit and deploy its payloads or travel to its deep space destination, and finally return to Earth to be flown again.
SpaceX’s long-term plans for Starship operations involve the use of a floating launch pad parked in the ocean. SpaceX is converting a decommissioned offshore drilling platform for its future Super Heavy and Starship launch facility.
The Super Heavy booster will be powered by 28 Raptor engines, producing some 16 million pounds of thrust, more than twice the power output of five booster engines on NASA’s Apollo-era Saturn 5 moon rocket.
The entire Super Heavy and Starship stack will measure around 30 feet (9 meters) wide, about one-and-a-half times the diameter of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
