Elon Musk (Elon Musk), president of the SpaceX company, said that the Starship ship and the Super Heavy launch vehicle have passed refueling tests and are ready for launch to orbital altitude, which will occur in the near future. 4.5 thousand tons of liquid methane fuel and oxygen were pumped into the tanks of the 122-meter-long rocket, whose assembly was completed on site. The refueling rehearsal was deemed successful. The rocket is ready to launch at any moment.

Launch permission for the rocket and ship has not yet been granted by the regulatory agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Less than two weeks ago, SpaceX announced that the regulator required 17 changes to its rocket and spacecraft design: 7 to the Super Heavy first stage design and 10 to the Starship vehicle design. The commission, which investigated the reasons for the explosions that occurred on the carrier and the ship during the second test of this platform, concluded that changes needed to be made.

The second launch, which resulted in Super Heavy and Starship explosions, took place on November 18, 2023. The first launch attempt on April 20, 2023 also ended in disaster. Since then, the company has made numerous changes to the architecture and infrastructure of both the launch pad, the first stage, and the ship. The company also followed the new advisory package, according to Musk, who promised to send Starship on a new test flight very soon.

Comments mainly concerned the fire safety of the ship, as well as the reliability of the supply of oxidizer (liquid oxygen) to the engines of the first stage. During the second test run, the filter’s oxygen supply became clogged, causing one of the Super Heavy’s engines to fail, which was followed by a series of failures. The filtering system in the updated accelerator has been changed and made more reliable.

The company also converted the thrust vector control system of the ship’s engines from hydraulic to electric and made changes to the excess fuel evacuation circuit. During the previous launch, a fire broke out during oxygen evacuation, which destroyed the communication lines of the onboard communications system with the computer. Therefore, in addition to making changes to the fuel operating circuit, fire protection of communication lines was also introduced.

Elon Musk expresses confidence that the rocket will be launched as soon as possible. It’s not just the company that needs this; Starship is being built on NASA’s program to return a man to the moon. Elon Musk’s ship must deliver the crew to the satellite’s orbit and then land in the satellite’s south polar region. The stakes are extremely high. China plans to do this before the US.