On December 25th, Elon Musk, CEO and founder of SpaceX, a US space exploration technology company, stated on Thursday that with the arrival of 2021, the company will accelerate its Development plans for interstellar spacecraft and super heavy rockets.

Musk revealed that SpaceX will seek to use its two launch pads at the development facility in Boca Chica, Texas, to accelerate the testing of interplanetary spacecraft prototypes, and will begin test flights of its super-heavy rocket booster in the coming months. Start by "jumping" at low altitude.

Recently, SpaceX installed the next interplanetary prototype SN9 on its Pad B launch pad at the Boca Chica test facility. Previously, SpaceX successfully launched its predecessor SN8 to an altitude of about 40,000 feet (about 12 kilometers), and then performed a key "abdominal flip" action, which will be used to help control the landing of the production version of the spacecraft. However, SN8 crashed and exploded during landing, but SpaceX still achieved all test goals through this flight. SN9 will now be tested on the ground, and then it is expected to conduct high-altitude flight tests later. This will provide the SpaceX team with more valuable data for further testing. The ultimate goal is to use the interstellar spacecraft to achieve orbital flight. Musk said in a post that the two interplanetary spacecraft prototypes will stand side by side on Pad A and Pad B at Boca Chica, which may indicate that SpaceX's testing pace will accelerate to match the company's construction of new spacecraft. match. At the same time, the news that the super-heavy rocket may be tested soon is also the reason why SpaceX and the Starship team are excited about 2021. The super-heavy rocket is the booster SpaceX ultimately uses to put the interstellar spacecraft into orbit, and ultimately help propel it to deep space, including Mars. The super-heavy rocket is about 240 feet (73 meters) high and will include 28 Raptor engines. When stacked with an interstellar spacecraft full of payload, it will provide it with the thrust needed to escape the gravity of the Earth. (Little)

Source: NetEase Technology Report, translated by Google Translate