The U.S. spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX completed the first full flight-like wet dress rehearsal of its Starship vehicle on Jan. 23, 2023, at its Starbase facility in South Texas.
This was the first time an integrated Ship and Booster were fully loaded with more than 10 million pounds of propellant. The wet dress rehearsal was a huge step toward the vehicle’s upcoming orbital test flight.
SpaceX posted on Twitter: “Today’s test will help verify a full launch countdown sequence, as well as the performance of Starship and the orbital pad for flight-like operations.”
According to Space.com, The successful full flight-like wet dress rehearsal keeps this Starship vehicle on track for an orbital test flight in the near future. The vehicle consists of a Super Heavy prototype called Booster 7 and the Ship 24 upper-stage variant.
The SpaceX website describes that the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket (collectively referred to as Starship) represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Starship completed its first full flight-like wet dress rehearsal at Starbase today. This was the first time an integrated Ship and Booster were fully loaded with more than 10 million pounds of propellant pic.twitter.com/btprGNGZ1G
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 24, 2023
The two-stage vehicle is composed of the Super Heavy rocket (booster) and Starship (spacecraft) and is powered by sub-cooled methane and oxygen. Starship is designed to evolve rapidly to meet near-term and future needs while maintaining the highest level of reliability.
“Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry in excess of 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit,” according to the company’s website.
Starship has a payload capacity of 100 metric tonnes (220,000 lb) to low Earth orbit. In order to spread out the cost of the spacecraft, it is designed to be flown multiple times. The spacecraft can be refueled in orbit before traveling to destinations that require more change in velocity, such as the Moon and Mars.
