SpaceX said it has inspected its latest Starship giant rocket ahead of an upcoming test flight.
Starship is the largest, most powerful and fully reusable rocket ever built, made up of two elements: a gigantic first stage called Super Heavy and an upper stage spacecraft called Starship, or simply the Ship. The stacked Starship has flown four times so far, but SpaceX plans to do more soon.
“Starship and Super Heavy on Flight 5 are ready to fly, pending regulatory approval,” the company announced Thursday afternoon (August 8) via X. “Additional booster catch tests and vehicle tests are planned for Flight 6, pending flight authorization.”
The regulatory approval will likely come from the US Federal Aviation Administration, which issues launch licenses from US territory.
Related: SpaceX Test Fires Super Heavy Starship Booster Ahead of Fifth Flight (Video)
As for the second part of that post, SpaceX will use the “chopstick” arm of its launch tower at its Starbase facility in South Texas to capture the returning Super Heavy during the Flight 5 mission.
SpaceX has never attempted anything like this before: Starship’s first four test flights (in April 2023, November 2023, and March and June of this year) were aimed at landing Super Heavy in the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX accomplished this during a June flight that the company hailed as a complete success, with Starship’s upper stage also splashing down and surviving re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, landing in the Indian Ocean.
This was a first for both Starship stages: in the first three test flights, neither Super Heavy nor the ship had landed on water intact.
SpaceX has already tested the engines of both stages of Flight 5, igniting the Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines on July 15 and the ship’s six Raptor engines on July 26. These tests, called static ignitions, are typical pre-launch tests of rockets.
SpaceX has big plans for Starship, believing the vehicle to be a breakthrough that will finally make colonization of the Moon and Mars economically feasible.
