Miami, Apr 19 (EFE).- The space company SpaceX announced this Wednesday that its technicians continue working on the launch of the Starship mega rocket for its first test flight that will take place tomorrow, Thursday, April 20, once the technical problem that on Monday forced to delay it.
“Teams continue to work toward Thursday, April 20 for the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket,” the private company said on Twitter.
The 62-minute launch window will open at 8:28 a.m. (1:28 p.m. HMT) in the morning Texas time and close at 9:30 a.m. (2:30 p.m. GMT), the Elon Musk-owned company reported on its website.
The super rocket designed to transport people to Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars is based at Starbase, on the Texas coast, and consists of a fully integrated ship (Starship) and propellant (Super Heavy Rocket).
The launch was scheduled for Monday the 17th in the morning, but the company decided to suspend it because the technicians discovered that a pressurization valve was frozen shortly before takeoff, although a countdown drill was carried out for the next attempt. .
Starship is a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo into Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond, SpaceX says on its website.
The height of the huge rocket and ship is 120 meters (394 feet), the diameter is 9 meters (29.5 feet), and it can carry 100 to 150 metric tons of cargo, extendable to 250 tons.
The SpaceX team has done multiple suborbital flight tests of the Starship upper stage, which helped validate the vehicle’s design.
Tests have shown that Starship can fly through the subsonic entry phase before restarting its engines and switching to a vertical configuration for landing.
In addition to testing the Starship upper stage, the team has conducted numerous tests of the Super Heavy rocket, including firing the largest number of engines at once in history.
The Starship team has also built the world’s tallest rocket capture and launch tower, at almost 146 meters (nearly 500 feet) tall.
