SpaceX Starship Flight 10 Objectives and Launch Date

SpaceX has officially announced the Starship Flight 10, and all preparations have been made before the launch date to conduct the liftoff accordingly. With this flight, SpaceX is planning to further test the new upgrades to the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage, while gathering data to improve future missions.

Starship Flight 10 Objectives

The booster will liftoff with 33 Raptor engines from Launch Pad 1 at Starbase, Texas, targeting a nominal ascent before hot-staging. Similar to the last flight, the booster will conduct a flip maneuver in a controlled direction before performing a boostback burn.

This maneuver reduces the requirement for propellant to be held in reserve for descent, allowing SpaceX to use it for the ascent phase to take more payload mass into space. The landing phase will include new engine configurations and one of its three center engines will be disabled to check the ability of a backup engine from the middle ring to complete a landing burn.

9th Starship Test Flight lifted off from Starbase, Texas (Source – SpaceX)

The booster will rely on only two center engines for the landing burn to achieve a hovering state over the ocean. That said, the booster for this flight will not return to the launch site for a catch; instead, it will splash down in the Gulf of America.

After hot-staging, the second stage will fire its six engines to complete the ascent phase and mark a nominal orbit insertion. The ship will once again target the payload deployment of eight Starlink simulators, similar to the size of next-gen Starlink satellites. These will be carried on the same suborbital plane as Starship and diminish after reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.

The next objective is to relight a single Raptor engine in space, to verify the ship’s in-space functionality. However, the payload and engine relight objectives have been in a tough spot due to the Ship’s instability to complete the entire test flight.

The final objective of the flight will be to get the upper through reentry and splashdown. To test flight hardware, SpaceX has removed numerous tiles from Starship to stress-test vulnerable areas when exposed to the atmospheric drag and heat. On the other hand, the company is testing new tiles and materials, including metallic tiles with active cooling, to find new ways to keep the ship cool during reentry.

The ship has new functional catch fittings to test its thermal and structural performance. One section of the ship tile line has been made with a smooth and tapered edge to address hot spots observed during reentry on the 6th Starship flight.

Similar to previous flights, SpaceX will intentionally stress the ship’s landing profile to test the hardware limits of the rear flaps, which face maximum entry dynamic pressure.

Starship Flight 10 Launch Date

SpaceX is targeting Sunday, August 24, for liftoff of this new Starship rocket, and a launch window will open at 6:30 p.m. CT. The company could shift this launch date based on different factors, including weather conditions.