After his explosive semi-failure, Elon Musk's starship starts on a mission on Saturday
The starship at the ITF7 ended in catching up with the Heavy booster by Mechazilla and the second floor explosion shortly after its hot staging. © SpaceX
Elon Musk’s starship will reconnect with his impressive tests during an planned launch in Florida, March 1 at 12:30 am, French time (6.30 p.m. on February 28, local time).
The last launcher flight, the largest rocket of all time, had not been a total success last January, mild euphemism. However, the spectacular catch -up of the super heavy booster by The Mechazilla tower had been a great successimitating, even improving that of October 2024.
The (big) problem was obviously the explosion of the starship itself, namely the upper floor of the SpaceX launcher. The same one that should soon allow, perhaps in 2027, to place a crew on the Moon as part of the Mission Artemis III. This second floor had undergone a critical damage at an altitude of 146 km and 21,317 km/h in the form of a fire declared in its engines, causing its disintegration, not without consequencesin the earth's atmosphere.
Disintegration of the starship during the ITF-7 © screenshot
SpaceX has since communicated on this incident following a fuel leak in an unprecedented area between the liquid oxygen tank and the thermal shield of the ship. Boredom for Elon Musk's company is that it was a new version of the starship, the V2. Note that Donald Trump's friend's friend will not have to wait a long time to get the right to launch his monster over 5000 tonnes again …
Starship V2 must absolutely succeed in this IFT-8 test to go to the following steps
This new version, almost 2 m and heavier than 300 tonnes, has changes to its thermal fins and shields, which suffered too much in previous controlled atmospheric returns. New active cooling tile system technology will also be tested. The ITF-8 is therefore very similar to the ITF-7, with for example a Starlink Bay simulator for the payload and an attempt to reinforce the motors in the space vacuum. The starship will have to make a controlled return and a bittering in the Indian Ocean.
ITF-8 infographic. © Vikranth Jonna (account x)
Once these steps have been successfully crossed, two other technical developments await SpaceX in order to make the stars operational for the Artemis program, then possibly the inhabited missions towards Mars. We should then attend the catch-up by a mechazilla tower on the second floor, as well as the refueling in terrestrial orbit, maneuver that has only been observed in synthetic images (at 3 ”30 on the video in connection below) and condition sine qua no Starship for the moon and beyond.
