Following two prior tests of the water deluge system and a spin prime test of Booster 9, SpaceX lit all 33 engines for the primary firing because the April twentieth Integrated Test Flight.
SpaceX began the technique of fueling the rocket early this morning but encountered a difficulty when chilling the lines that run to the rocket, and a red team was sent back to the pad to perform repairs. After repairs were accomplished, the red team departed and SpaceX spooled up their fuel tank farm again.
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Booster 9 static fire test (Credit: SpaceX)
After a few hours of chilling the fuel lines, filling of the liquid oxygen and liquid methane tanks aboard Booster 9 began at T-Minus 67 minutes. The liquid oxygen tank was fully stuffed with the liquid methane only partially stuffed with what was required for the test.
After a smooth countdown, Booster 9 lit all 33 Raptor engines, nonetheless, 4 shut down early in the course of the 2.74-second duration test. The test was intended to last 5 seconds.’
The brand new water deluge system looked as if it would work as intended, albeit with a really short firing of the engines. As a substitute of a large dust cloud that is often formed after a static fire test, this test created a steam cloud that dissipated fairly quickly following the test.
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Booster 9 from above shortly after the static fire test (Credit: SpaceX)
SpaceX will now go over the information collected, most probably switch out the Raptor engines that didn’t perform as expected, and conduct one other static fire test. That test could come inside the following couple of weeks.
Watch a replay of the static fire below!