SpaceX will debut quite a few upgrades on the second launch of its full-scale Starship mega-rocket. These upgrades embrace a serious change in how the rocket’s two phases separate, propulsion system enhancements, and a beefed-up launch pad in South Texas that ought to higher face up to the blast from 33 primary engines.

“There are actually an amazing variety of modifications between the final Starship flight and this one, properly over a thousand,” mentioned Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO. “So I feel the chance of this subsequent flight working, attending to orbit, is far greater than the final one. Possibly it is like 60 %. It is dependent upon how properly we do at stage separation.”

Musk outlined a few of the Starship rocket modifications in a Twitter Areas dialogue on Saturday with journalist Ashlee Vance. He mentioned the following Starship rocket and upgrades to the launch pad on the Starbase facility in South Texas must be prepared for the following take a look at flight in about six weeks. “That’s simply the most effective of our data proper now,” Musk mentioned.

The Starship automobile is designed to be totally reusable, and SpaceX plans to make use of it for hauling satellites into orbit, developing refueling tankers and propellant depots, and ultimately transporting cargo and crew to the Moon and Mars. SpaceX’s long-term aim is to interchange its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon crew capsule with the privately funded Starship automobile.

SpaceX officers have been happy with the end result of the first full Starship take a look at flight on April 20, which reached an altitude of about 24 miles (38 kilometers) earlier than tumbling uncontrolled after a number of engine failures and the lack of the rocket’s steering system. The take a look at flight set the report for the biggest and strongest rocket ever flown—at 394 ft (120 meters) tall with some 15 million kilos of thrust from its methane-fueled Raptor engines.

The rocket is split into two segments. A booster stage referred to as Tremendous Heavy with 33 Raptor engines is designed to energy the automobile by Earth’s environment, then an higher stage with six engines—recognized merely as Starship—takes over to speed up to orbital velocity. On operational missions, the Starship higher stage may function a propellant tanker, payload deployer, or crew cabin.

One of the vital important modifications SpaceX is making to the Starship design is in separating the booster from the higher stage, an occasion that happens about three minutes after liftoff. The Starship take a look at flight in April didn’t attain the stage separation milestone.

“We made a form of a late-breaking change that is actually fairly important to the best way that stage separation works, which is to make use of what’s referred to as ‘sizzling staging,’ the place we gentle the engines of the higher stage, or ship, whereas the primary stage, or booster stage, engines are nonetheless on,” Musk mentioned.

Russian rockets, just like the venerable Soyuz, have employed the new staging method for many years, but it surely’s not used on any trendy US launch automobile. Usually, rockets swap off their booster engines for a number of seconds earlier than jettisoning the primary stage and lighting the higher stage engine.

Musk mentioned SpaceX would shut down many of the Tremendous Heavy booster’s engines, then fireplace the engines on the Starship higher stage concurrently. The upshot of the change is it will increase the Starship’s payload elevate functionality, which already amounted to greater than 100 metric tons to low Earth orbit. But it surely means engineers should add shielding to the highest of the stainless-steel booster, which SpaceX desires to get well and reuse quite a few occasions.

“Clearly, that ends in sort of blasting the booster, so you have to shield the highest of the enhance stage from getting incinerated by the higher stage engines,” Musk mentioned, including that the design change would add a roughly 10 % enchancment to the Starship rocket’s payload capability.

Separating the rocket’s phases with the booster engines already shut down causes a loss in thrust. Whereas the rocket briefly continues climbing, the pull of Earth’s gravity begins to cut back its velocity.

“So that you wish to begin the ship engines earlier than you have fully shut down the booster engines,” Musk mentioned.