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‘One day, Starship will take us to Mars’, says Elon Musk after latest SpaceX fire test

‘One day, Starship will take us to Mars’, says Elon Musk after latest SpaceX fire test

SpaceX fire test

Elon Musk’s SpaceX carried out a successful static fire test of the engines of its Super Heavy rocket booster on February 9, thereby achieving a critical milestone of inching closerto its first orbital flight in the coming months, as reported by Reuters.The rockets are part of the company's Starship system designed to carry out space expeditions, including carrying humans to Mars and the Moon. Speaking about the success of the mission,Elon Musk stressed on the vision that his space vehicle will one day carry humans to Mars.

The test was conducted at SpaceX’s Starbase facility located in South Texas and witnessed 31 of the 33 engines being ignited. A drone footage of the test was tweeted by SpaceX, that shows the booster engines igniting for several seconds and kicking up a dust storm while being strapped to the ground. “Views from drone of Booster 7's static fire test,” the caption read.

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In reaction to the video, Elon Musk wrote, “One day, Starship will take us to Mars.”

The Tesla CEO has been working steadily on his ambitious project of creating a permanent human settlement on Mars. On being asked by the Twitterati onwhen he expects humans to land on Mars, Musk said, “I must admit to being congenitally optimistic (SpaceX & Tesla wouldn't exist otherwise), but I think 5 years is possible and 10 years is highly likely.”

Booster 7 Super heavy rocket

The Booster 7 Super Heavy rocket created by SpaceX is considered the most powerful ever built by the company consisting of 33 Raptor engines. The test, conducted in Texas, had the objective to fire up all engines but only 31 could be kicked off. One engine was turned off before the test, while another did not ignite.

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“Team turned off 1 engine just before start & 1 stopped itself, so 31 engines fired overall. But still enough engines to reach orbit!” Elon Musk tweeted.

According to Space.com, the Starship space vehicle has two components – a gigantic booster called Super Heavy and an upper stage named Starship. While the booster will use 33 of them, the upper stage will need six engine units.

(With inputs from agencies)

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