SpaceX launched the third test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday, as the company pushed development of the mammoth vehicle past new milestones.
It looked to me like the cargo bay door didn’t latch securely back in place, either.
Still, SpaceX always seems willing to add a few stretch goals to every launch. Starlinks are cheap enough that they could stick a few in the rack just in case everything works out.
I hope so, but if they launch on the suborbital trajectory again because they aren’t certain about the Raptor relight for a deorbit burn, then I’m guessing a Starlink won’t be able to deploy and raise its orbit in time to not also reenter.
It looked to me like the cargo bay door didn’t latch securely back in place, either.
Still, SpaceX always seems willing to add a few stretch goals to every launch. Starlinks are cheap enough that they could stick a few in the rack just in case everything works out.
I hope so, but if they launch on the suborbital trajectory again because they aren’t certain about the Raptor relight for a deorbit burn, then I’m guessing a Starlink won’t be able to deploy and raise its orbit in time to not also reenter.
Yeah, they’d need to be doing an orbital test for it to be worth the bother.