Elon Musk is determined to get to Mars and return home, but in order for a spacecraft to re-enter Earth's atmosphere, it needs to be able to withstand the heat. Yesterday, SpaceX tested the heat shield tiles that allow the company's Starship interplanetary spacecraft to do just that. ...
"The flight test will assess new secondary thermal protection materials and will have entire sections of heat shield tiles removed on either side of the ship in locations being studied for catch-enabling hardware on future vehicles," SpaceX wrote in am...
SpaceX redesigned Starship’s heat shield for this test after Starship lost fragments of its shielding during reentry in June. The company used new heat shielding tiles and added an extra backup ablative layer, asArsTechnicadescribedlast week. ...
"Despite loss of many (heat-shield) tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!" SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on X. "Congratulations @SpaceX team on an epic achievement!" A drone captures a view of the Super Heavy-Starship blasting off fr...
Over the last six or so months, SpaceX has been gradually expanding small installations of heat shield tiles on Starship prototypes, ranging from vehicles that never left the ground to high-altitude Starships SN8 and SN9. Those tile installations have grown from a handful (4-8 on Starhopper in...
–Thermal protection of booster engines –Ground propellant storage tanks –QD [quick disconnect] arm for ship Musk estimated that the heat shield tiles are around 98% complete and that the remaining tasks would take around two weeks. Then the ship will be able to move to its first orbital ...
He said SpaceX needs to add the "final heat shield tiles" to the ship, add "thermal protection" to the Raptor rocket engines in Booster 4, complete work on "ground propellant storage tanks" and add a quick disconnect arm to the top of the recently built launch tower. The quick disconnec...
of suborbital Starship flight testing, all finished ships (S20, S21, S22, S24, S25) have been fitted with ~10,000 black, ceramic heat shield tiles. Eventually, those tiles will (theoretically) protect Starships from the intense heat created by reentering Earth’s atmosphere at orbital ...
Ship 29 lit all 6 Raptor engines for around four seconds on sub-orbital pad B at Starbase, sending up a massive cloud of dust, and once the dust cleared, Ship 29 was still standing, just missing a few heat shield tiles. Full-duration static fire of all six Raptor engines on Flight 4...
The heat shield technology also still needs to be extensively tested during re-entries and possibly adapted, depending on what the tests reveal. However, it is believed that the heat shield tiles will meet their protection and reusability requirements by the first launch in 2027, especially since...