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SpaceX moved its latest spacecraft prototype to its Texas testing ground on Thursday (April 23) before a new round of spacecraft testing.
The spacecraft prototype, a gleaming stainless steel cylinder, is SpaceX’s fourth test vehicle for a massive reusable spacecraft designed to fly to the moon, Mars, and beyond. Called Starship SN4 (for serial number 4), it is the centerpiece of a launch system that SpaceX hopes will one day lead to a colony on Mars.
“Starship SN4 Tank on Test Bench”, SpaceX Founder and CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter while sharing a photo of the test vehicle.
The video captured by Spadre.com showed SpaceX teams slowly moving the spacecraft prototype from its construction site near the town of Boca Chica, South Texas, to a nearby test bed. Starship SN4 is expected to undergo cryogenic pressure tests similar to those SpaceX has performed on its three predecessors, some of which have been destroyed.
Video: Watch SpaceX’s SN4 spacecraft unfold on the test rig
Plus: SpaceX spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket in pictures
On April 2, SpaceX’s Starship SN3 appeared to collapse during a liquid nitrogen cyrogenic pressure test designed to demonstrate that the vehicle could withstand high pressures when filled with super-cold fuel for real flight. Musk then said that the leaking valves were to blame.
SpaceX’s Starship SN2 successfully passed a similar pressure test on March 8. But nine days earlier, on February 28, its predecessor SN1 was lost in a test. SpaceX’s first large spacecraft prototype, called the Mk1, was destroyed during its own pressure test in November 2019. (Subsequently, SpaceX renewed the Starship design, leading to the SN series.)
Musk has repeatedly said that SpaceX will continue to test new versions of Starship with the goal of launching a 20-kilometer-high jump sometime this year. In August 2019, SpaceX successfully launched a smaller prototype, the single-engine Starhopper, in a short jump that aimed at a height of 500 feet (150 meters).
In the past few weeks, SpaceX has released a user guide for Starship to announce its launch capabilities for bulk uploads. The company has already signed a client for a trip around the moon using a spaceship and its massive Super Heavy booster. That trip, booked by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, was targeted no earlier than 2023.
More recently, Musk has weighed in on the inevitable successors to Starship SN4. SpaceX is already thinking about the SN5 and SN6 spacecraft, he added.
Starship SN5 should be more than a cylinder, and deployed with its top tanks and nose, Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. (April, the 21st).
“Definitely the header and nose tanks on SN5, hopefully, it also flaps,” Musk wrote. “It definitely flaps on SN6.”
Email Tariq Malik at [email protected] or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
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