Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is set Thursday night to deliver an
eagerly-awaited update on SpaceX's Starship, a prototype rocket the company
is developing for crewed interplanetary exploration.
The tycoon will make his presentation at SpaceX's Starbase facility near
Boca Chica, south Texas, at 8:00 pm local time (0200 GMT Friday), against
the impressive backdrop of the spacecraft in its fully-stacked
configuration, standing 394 feet (120 meters) tall.
It will be Musk's first detailed progress report since 2019—though he often
provides small updates on Twitter—and is expected be live-streamed on the
company's website.
Ahead of the event, he tweeted several photos and videos of Starship's matte
black upper-stage being placed on its shimmering silver Super Heavy
first-stage rocket.
Together, they make the biggest spacecraft ever built: taller than even the
Saturn V rockets that took astronauts to the Moon during the Apollo era.
Made of stainless steel and designed to be fully reusable, Starship is
intended to lift up to 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.
SpaceX envisages the ship carrying crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and
beyond—and last year, NASA awarded the company a contract for a version of
Starship to ferry astronauts on the Artemis program from lunar orbit to the
surface.
Starship's upper stage has already made several suborbital flights. After
multiple tests that ended in impressive explosions, SpaceX finally succeeded
in landing the spacecraft last May.
Musk has promised a far more ambitious orbital test this year—pending
clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration—which will require both
stages of the vessel.
The FAA said in a December release that clearance could come by February 28,
meaning the milestone could take place in March at the earliest.
Source: Link
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Space & Astrophysics