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The next test flight of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster will take off on Thursday, and the hour-long segment will be seen as Starship’s last flight in May.
But there is an important difference in this setup, which will take place during the opening window that opens at 5:45 pm CDT (22:45 UTC) on Thursday. The most notable change is the inclusion of real, working Starlink satellites inside the Starship’s cargo bay. SpaceX has already tested the ship shipping method using simulations to model the mass and size of the company’s next generation Starlink Version 3 Broadband satellites.
This time– The 13th test flight of Starship and the second to use SpaceX’s new version of Starship– experts installed 20 Starlink V3 satellites in the spacecraft’s launcher, a system of instruments and cables designed to launch the stack of satellites one at a time through an opening in the side of the spacecraft. The satellites are not part of SpaceX’s network, but engineers have attempted to briefly establish laser communication links between Starlink V3s and other spacecraft orbiting Earth. If successful, these links will ensure compatibility of Starlink V3 with SpaceX’s previous generation of Starlink.
