SpaceX Points Rocket Engine To The Sky During Rare Test Firing

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As it moves towards the second highly anticipated orbital flight test of its Starship rocket, SpaceX is busy testing Starship's Raptor engines at its facilities in McGregor, Texas. These engines are essential for Starship's success, and although SpaceX has been developing them for years, the complexity of the rocket often leads to engine problems during flight. As part of its developmental tests, the firm shared footage of a rare Raptor test where the engine was gimballed at an angle to the horizontal test site. Crucially, the test was a long duration test fire which the engine performed with ease, showing that engine problems might soon become a thing of the past for SpaceX.

Before it can fly any rocket, whether the Falcon 9 or Starship, SpaceX tests all of its engines at its facilities in McGregor. McGregor is one of the company's oldest sites and has contributed to the development of all of SpaceX's rocket engines. The latest engine to the firm's portfolio is the Raptor engine, designed exclusively for Starship. While SpaceX is yet to fly the full Starship stack successfully, it has already upgraded the Raptor, and the latest variant that has been publicly disclosed is the Raptor 3.

The engine has been firing up for years now, and problems with its combustion chamber were among the reasons some of the tests in SpaceX's upper-stage Starship campaign failed. Raptor is significantly more powerful than the Merlin engines, which power the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. According to Elon Musk, the Raptor 3 can generate 590,000 pounds of thrust, and the engine might have entered volume