After receiving a long-awaited approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration, SpaceX announced that it is aiming for a first test flight of Starship in its full configuration, the world’s largest rocket, on Monday.
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This 120-meter high launch vehicle, which Elon Musk’s company has been developing for years, is intended for trips to space, the moon and Mars.
The launch is scheduled to take place from the Starbase space base in far south Texas, United States.
The two-and-a-half-hour fire window will open at 7 a.m. local time (1200 GMT) on Monday, SpaceX announced on Friday. Fallback appointments are scheduled for the week.
The outcome of the test is uncertain, but SpaceX said its success will be measured by “how much you learn from it.”
“Success maybe, excitement guaranteed!” Elon Musk tweeted.
This launch vehicle has never flown in its full configuration with its first stage called Super Heavy.
Only the vehicle’s second stage, the Starship spacecraft, which gives its name to the entire rocket, conducted suborbital test flights (at an altitude of about 10 km), several of which ended in impressive explosions.
It is this spacecraft chosen by NASA to land astronauts on the moon during the Artemis 3 mission, officially scheduled for 2025.
On Friday, the US Civil Aviation Administration (FAA) issued Starship a “valid for five years” flight license.
In the future, both stages of the spacecraft must be able to come to rest on Earth to make the rocket fully reusable. But for this first flight there will be no attempt to recover them and both Starship and Super Heavy are expected to crash into the ocean.
The idea of a reusable launcher, Elon Musk’s grand strategy, is to lower prices. Each Starship flight could end up costing “less than ten million” dollars, he had assured in the past.
In February, SpaceX conducted an impressive ground test of the Super Heavy engines. A total of 31 of the 33 Raptor engines had fired, according to SpaceX “the highest number of simultaneous rocket engine firings in history.”
A few months ago, NASA’s SLS rocket (98 meters high) became the world’s most powerful operational rocket during its maiden flight for the lunar mission Artemis 1 and could therefore be dethroned as early as next week.