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While many companies in Texas are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemicSpaceX has been busy putting together the latest Starship prototype at its Boca Chica development facility. The first version of Elon Musk’s Mars rocket has the serial number SN4, and he shared a photo of it on the test bench on Thursday.
SN4 joined quickly in the last few weeks after a The previous version collapsed during a pressure test earlier this month.
A webcam created by a nearby resident captured the previous time-lapse video of the spacecraft’s SN4 prototype stacked inside the vehicle assembly building at the company’s site. NASASpaceflight.com reports that bulkheads for another unit, SN5, are also being built on-site.
This has been the company’s mode of operation during the development of Starship: quickly assemble two prototypes on the fly so you can quickly pivot to a new unit if one fails. So far, both SN1 and SN3 have failed during pressure testing, while SN2 passed.
SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk said this series of prototypes will be able to fly at an altitude of around 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) and land back on Earth. We will likely see one of the SN series prototypes make a shorter “jump” before that.
It’s unclear when we might see any of the spacecraft prototypes take off, but Musk should soon have a quiver of three of the rockets to work with, which will surely help.
