SpaceX’s Starship goes orbital, deploying first next-gen Starlinks

SpaceX 星舰进入轨道，首次部署下一代星链卫星

SpaceX’s Starship rocket thundered into the sky over South Texas early Monday. It was the 14th test flight of the world’s most powerful launch vehicle. This time, however, the rocket’s massive upper stage squeezed out some extra oomph from its Raptor engines and accelerated to orbital velocity. 周一清晨，SpaceX 的星舰（Starship）火箭在南德克萨斯州上空轰鸣升空。这是这款全球最强运载火箭的第 14 次试飞。然而与以往不同的是，这次火箭巨大的上面级通过猛禽（Raptor）发动机榨取了额外的动力，加速达到了轨道速度。

On all of Starship’s previous flights, SpaceX intentionally dialed back the full capability of the rocket to fly a suborbital trajectory, slow enough for Earth’s gravity to pull the vehicle back into the atmosphere before it could complete a full lap around the planet. After several successful suborbital flights in a row, SpaceX officials decided this launch should go all the way to low-Earth orbit. And it did. 在星舰之前的所有飞行中，SpaceX 都刻意限制了火箭的全部性能，使其进行亚轨道飞行。其速度足够慢，以便在完成绕地球一周之前，地球引力就能将飞行器拉回大气层。在连续几次成功的亚轨道飞行后，SpaceX 官员决定此次发射应直接进入近地轨道。最终，他们做到了。

What’s more, SpaceX packed 26 of the company’s newest generation of Starlink broadband satellites into the rocket’s cargo bay. One by one, the flat-packed satellites—too large to fit inside SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket—were released from Starship’s payload deployer using a system of pulleys and cables to eject the satellites overboard like a Pez dispenser spits out candy. 此外，SpaceX 在火箭货舱内装载了 26 颗该公司最新一代的星链（Starlink）宽带卫星。这些扁平包装的卫星体积太大，无法装入 SpaceX 的主力猎鹰 9 号（Falcon 9）火箭。它们通过星舰的载荷部署器，利用滑轮和缆绳系统逐一释放，就像“贝兹糖果机”（Pez dispenser）吐出糖果一样将卫星弹出。

A dramatic morning Starship Flight 14 began with a booming sendoff from Starbase, Texas, at 8:49 am EDT (7:49 am local time; 12:49 UTC) as 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines pushed the 407-foot-tall (124-meter) rocket off its launch pad. The engines generated up to 18 million pounds of thrust to propel the fuel-laden rocket into the sky over Starbase, SpaceX’s private spaceport just north of the US-Mexico border. 星舰第 14 次飞行（Flight 14）在周一清晨以一场震撼的发射拉开序幕。美国东部时间上午 8:49（当地时间上午 7:49；协调世界时 12:49），33 台甲烷燃料猛禽发动机推动着 407 英尺（124 米）高的火箭离开发射台。这些发动机产生了高达 1800 万磅的推力，将载满燃料的火箭推向位于美墨边境以北的 SpaceX 私人航天港——星际基地（Starbase）上空。

Heading east from South Texas, the rocket powered through the speed of sound and soared into the stratosphere before its Super Heavy booster stage detached from Starship’s upper stage. The booster executed a rapid high-altitude turnaround to begin thrusting back toward the Texas coast. Several minutes later, the Super Heavy first stage made a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Starbase. 火箭从南德克萨斯州向东飞行，突破音障并冲入平流层，随后超重型助推器（Super Heavy）与星舰上面级分离。助推器在高空迅速转向，开始向德克萨斯州海岸反向推进。几分钟后，超重型一级助推器在星际基地海岸外的墨西哥湾实现了受控溅落。

The upper stage continued its climb into space before shutting off its Raptor engines a little more than eight minutes into the flight. Up to this point, the rocket followed a similar trajectory as SpaceX’s previous Starship test flights. The company’s flight control team had a few minutes to decide whether to proceed with the next phase of the flight: a restart of one of Starship’s Raptor engines to add the final bit of speed required to reach orbital velocity. 上面级继续向太空爬升，并在飞行八分多钟后关闭了猛禽发动机。到目前为止，火箭的飞行轨迹与 SpaceX 之前的星舰试飞类似。公司的飞行控制团队有几分钟的时间来决定是否进行下一阶段飞行：重启其中一台猛禽发动机，以增加达到轨道速度所需的最后一点速度。

For a brief period, it appeared as if SpaceX was going to forego the orbital flight and allow Starship to continue coasting toward a reentry over the Indian Ocean, as it had done many times before. The question of what to do next centered on the performance of the rocket’s Raptor engines. One of the six Raptors on Starship shut down prematurely during its ascent burn, and the five others burned longer to compensate for the malfunction. 在短暂的时间里，看起来 SpaceX 似乎要放弃轨道飞行，让星舰像往常多次一样继续滑行，准备在印度洋上空重返大气层。下一步行动的关键在于火箭猛禽发动机的表现。星舰上的六台猛禽发动机中，有一台在上升燃烧过程中提前关闭，其余五台则通过延长燃烧时间来弥补这一故障。

Less of a worry for Starship’s orbital flight, but still a concern for future launches, was the apparent failure of two of the 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster—one during launch and another during the booster’s return maneuvers. Dan Huot, a SpaceX commentator providing live updates on the company’s webcast of Monday’s flight, initially reported that mission managers were going to abort the orbit insertion burn. 虽然对星舰的轨道飞行影响较小，但超重型助推器上 33 台猛禽发动机中有两台出现明显故障（一台在发射时，另一台在助推器返回机动时），这仍是未来发射需要担忧的问题。在周一飞行直播中提供实时更新的 SpaceX 评论员 Dan Huot 最初报告称，任务管理人员打算取消轨道注入燃烧。

Officials ultimately decided to proceed. The failed Raptor engine was not the same one that needed to fire to place the rocket into low-Earth orbit and steer it toward reentry and splashdown at the end of the flight. 官员们最终决定继续执行。发生故障的猛禽发动机并非执行轨道注入、引导火箭重返大气层并在飞行结束时溅落所需的那台发动机。

SpaceX engineers were being “extremely conservative” in their planning for Monday’s flight, Huot said. A worst-case scenario for the first orbital flight of Starship would have been a failure that stranded the 100-ton vehicle in orbit. That could have caused it to fall back to Earth in an uncontrolled manner, creating a potential risk to public safety. Huot 表示，SpaceX 工程师在周一的飞行计划中表现得“极其保守”。星舰首次轨道飞行的最坏情况是发生故障，导致这台 100 吨重的飞行器滞留在轨道上。这可能会导致它以失控的方式坠回地球，从而对公共安全构成潜在风险。

“We were only going to go if we were very confident in the core systems that have to work to get you out of orbit once you’re up there,” Huot said. “We took some extra time, added some extra drama, but we were able to clear the … three center engines and do our first ever orbital insertion burn. So that was a huge success.” “只有当我们对那些能让你在进入轨道后安全脱离轨道的关键系统充满信心时，我们才会采取行动，”Huot 说。“我们多花了一些时间，增加了一些戏剧性，但我们最终成功排查了……三台中心发动机，并完成了我们有史以来的第一次轨道注入燃烧。这是一个巨大的成功。”

The Raptor engine selected for the insertion burn performed flawlessly, reigniting for 19 seconds to give Starship the nudge it needed to overcome the pull of Earth’s gravity. The maneuver added approximately 204 mph to Starship’s speed, a little more than 1 percent of the rocket’s overall velocity, to reach a stable orbit at an altitude of about 171 miles (276 kilometers). 被选中执行注入燃烧的猛禽发动机表现完美，重新点火 19 秒，为星舰提供了克服地球引力所需的推力。这一机动使星舰的速度增加了约 204 英里/小时（约占火箭总速度的 1% 多一点），使其进入了高度约 171 英里（276 公里）的稳定轨道。

Achieving orbit meant SpaceX could continue with the next phase of the mission. This involved the first deployment of commercial-grade Starlink V3 satellites for the company’s global broadband network. SpaceX launched a batch of Starlink V3s on the previous Starship flight in July, but that mission was suborbital, and the satellites quickly burned up as they fell back into the atmosphere. 进入轨道意味着 SpaceX 可以继续执行任务的下一阶段。这涉及首次为公司的全球宽带网络部署商用级星链 V3 卫星。SpaceX 在 7 月份的上次星舰飞行中发射了一批星链 V3 卫星，但那次任务是亚轨道飞行，卫星在坠回大气层时很快烧毁了。

The Starlink V3s will bring significant upgrades to the Starlink constellation. The satellites can only launch on Starship. They’re too large to fit inside the payload fairing of the Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX has used to deploy more than 12,000 Starlinks since 2019. The Starlink V3s, each weighing about 2 metric tons (4,400 pounds) at launch, are fitted with larger power-generating… 星链 V3 将为星链星座带来重大升级。这些卫星只能通过星舰发射。它们的体积太大，无法装入猎鹰 9 号火箭的整流罩内，而 SpaceX 自 2019 年以来一直使用猎鹰 9 号部署了超过 12,000 颗星链卫星。每颗星链 V3 卫星发射时重约 2 公吨（4,400 磅），配备了更大的发电装置……