The India-US joint mission to study climate change with the world's most expensive Earth imaging satellite is in its final stages and the launch is expected in the first quarter of 2024, a senior NASA official has said.
Dec 10, 2020 10:18 EST
Late afternoon in Texas yesterday SpaceX conducted a key flight of its Starship SN8 prototype which intended to validate the design of the upper stage spacecraft of the next-generation launch system designed specifically for Mars missions. The SN8 was powered by three of SpaceX s Raptor liquid-oxygen, liquid-methane, gas-generator, staged-combustion rocket engines which are a brand new design over the company s Merlin 1D engines that power its launch-proven Falcon 9 rocket lineup.
They were at the center stage of yesterday s test, as two of SpaceX s three publicly stated goals for the testing involved the Raptor. These goals covered the engines re-ignition to land the SN8 after it successfully flipped itself vertically and the propellant switch from SN8 s primary to secondary tanks.