In early February, the next V3 booster successfully passed pressure testing. After it was moved to the launch pad, SpaceX planned to ignite 10 engines up to full power. But just after ignition, due to an automatic abort from the ground systems, a hard shutdown was commanded. This ended up damaging half of the Raptors.
Then, in mid-April, the company moved this booster with a full complement of 33 engines to the launch pad for another static fire test. This time, a ground-side sensor reported an issue with pressure in the manifolds, which distribute propellant to the vehicle. This may have been a spurious reading, but it ended the test early, just 1.88 seconds after ignition.
The company finally completed a successful, full-duration static fire test in early May.
“This is such a wild ride,” said Jenna Lowe, senior manager of Starship operations, in the new video. “The highs are high. The lows are low.”
The new rocket
In many ways, this is a brand new rocket. It incorporates hundreds of lessons learned from V1 and V2 of the vehicle and seeks to improve overall performance, reliability, and robustness. This is the vehicle that should hopefully allow SpaceX to start deploying large Starlink satellites into orbit and demonstrate in-space refueling that is critical for NASA’s Artemis Moon goals.
For the booster stage, the changes begin at the bottom and continue all the way to the top.
SpaceX says that for this third version of the Raptor rocket engine, it has reduced the mass to 1,525 kg from 1,630 kg and that overall vehicle-level mass savings are nearly 1 ton per engine through simplification of the engine itself, vehicle-side commodities, and supporting hardware. The entire fuel transfer system has been redesigned. This should be more reliable and will allow simultaneous startup of all Raptors.