SpaceX’s Starship launching to orbit for first time ever today

SpaceX 星舰今日首次尝试进入轨道

Update for Sept. 28, 12 p.m. ET: SpaceX successfully launched a Starship into orbit for the first time today, deploying 26 Starlink satellites before making a splashdown in the Northern Pacific Ocean. See our full Starship Flight 14 launch story with amazing videos and photos. Plus, don’t miss these stunning views of Starship in orbit as seen by Starlink.

美东时间 9 月 28 日中午 12 点更新：SpaceX 今日成功将星舰（Starship）送入轨道，在部署了 26 颗星链（Starlink）卫星后，星舰最终在北太平洋海域溅落。请查看我们关于星舰第 14 次飞行任务的完整报道，内含精彩视频与照片。此外，千万不要错过星链视角下星舰在轨运行的震撼画面。

SpaceX’s Starship megarocket will attempt to go orbital for the first time ever on Monday morning (Sept. 28), and you can watch the historic action live. Starship is scheduled to launch from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas Monday during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT; 7:15 a.m. local Texas time).

SpaceX 的星舰巨型火箭将于周一（9 月 28 日）上午首次尝试进入轨道，您可以观看这一历史性时刻的直播。星舰计划于周一在德克萨斯州南部的 SpaceX 星际基地（Starbase）发射，发射窗口期为 75 分钟，从美国东部时间上午 8:15（格林威治标准时间 12:15；德州当地时间上午 7:15）开始。

Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, standing a towering 407 feet (124 meters) tall when fully stacked. Both of its stages — the Super Heavy booster and Ship upper-stage spacecraft — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that SpaceX has called the “holy grail of rocketry.”

星舰是人类有史以来建造的最大、最强大的火箭，完全组装后高达 407 英尺（124 米）。其两级结构——“超重型”助推器（Super Heavy）和“星舰”上层飞船（Ship）——均被设计为可完全且快速重复使用，SpaceX 将这一突破称为“火箭技术的圣杯”。

The company believes that Starship will open the heavens like never before, allowing humanity to settle the moon and Mars, and perhaps venture even farther afield. But the rocket is not yet ready for such world-changing work; it’s still in the flight-test phase.

该公司相信，星舰将以前所未有的方式开启通往太空的大门，使人类能够定居月球和火星，甚至探索更遥远的深空。但该火箭目前尚未准备好执行这些改变世界的任务，它仍处于飞行测试阶段。

Starship debuted in April 2023 and now has 13 missions under its belt, all of them suborbital. That figures to change on Monday, however, when the giant vehicle launches for the 14th time.

星舰于 2023 年 4 月首次亮相，至今已执行了 13 次任务，全部为亚轨道飞行。然而，随着这一巨型飞行器在周一进行第 14 次发射，这一情况有望改变。

Flight 14 will send the 171-foot-tall (52 m) Ship to Earth orbit, where it will deploy 26 of SpaceX’s next-gen Starlink Version 3 internet satellites. These will be the first members of a new megaconstellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), which Elon Musk has said will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft. (SpaceX currently operates about 11,000 Starlink satellites in LEO).

第 14 次飞行任务将把 171 英尺（52 米）高的“星舰”飞船送入地球轨道，并在那里部署 26 颗 SpaceX 下一代星链 V3 互联网卫星。它们将成为低地球轨道（LEO）新巨型星座的首批成员，埃隆·马斯克曾表示，该星座最终将由 10 万颗卫星组成。（SpaceX 目前在低地球轨道运营着约 1.1 万颗星链卫星）。

Ship will circle our planet six times, then head home for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean of the coast of Chile nearly 10 hours after launch. This will be quite a departure from Starship’s suborbital flights, which lasted a maximum of 65 minutes and targeted the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.

“星舰”飞船将绕地球飞行 6 圈，然后在发射近 10 小时后返回，在智利海岸附近的太平洋海域溅落。这将与星舰此前的亚轨道飞行有很大不同，之前的飞行最长仅持续 65 分钟，且目标溅落点位于西澳大利亚海岸外的印度洋。

Super Heavy won’t stay up for nearly so long; it’s scheduled to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff, as it has on previous flights.

“超重型”助推器则不会在空中停留那么久；按照此前的飞行惯例，它计划在升空约 7 分钟后在墨西哥湾溅落。

During operational flights, SpaceX plans to bring both Super Heavy and Ship back to the launch pad, where they’ll be caught by the tower’s “chopstick” arms. The company has already done this three times with Super Heavy but has not yet attempted it with Ship.

在未来的商业运营飞行中，SpaceX 计划将“超重型”助推器和“星舰”飞船都带回发射台，并由发射塔的“筷子”机械臂进行回收。该公司此前已三次成功回收“超重型”助推器，但尚未尝试回收“星舰”飞船。

That box will be checked on another flight. And Starship will have other hurdles to clear as well, even if today’s flight goes perfectly. For example, each Starship mission beyond Earth orbit will require multiple rendezvous with “tanker” Ships to fuel up the voyaging spacecraft. SpaceX has yet to demonstrate off-Earth propellant transfer, so we will doubtless see that milestone on an upcoming test flight.

这一目标将在未来的飞行中实现。即便今天的飞行一切顺利，星舰仍需克服其他障碍。例如，每次超越地球轨道的星舰任务都需要与“加油”飞船进行多次对接，为远航飞船补充燃料。SpaceX 尚未演示过地球轨道外的推进剂转移技术，因此我们无疑将在未来的测试飞行中见证这一里程碑。

Ship will also have to be outfitted with a life-support system ahead of crewed missions, which could be coming relatively soon. For example, NASA picked Ship to the be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to land people on the moon for the first time in 2028 on the Artemis IV mission.

在执行载人任务之前，“星舰”飞船还必须配备生命支持系统，而载人任务可能很快就会到来。例如，NASA 已选中“星舰”作为其“阿尔忒弥斯”（Artemis）计划的首个载人登月舱，该计划旨在通过“阿尔忒弥斯 4 号”任务在 2028 年实现人类首次重返月球。