Last week, SpaceX announced that the Starship spacecraft has been fully assembled at the Starbase facility and is ready for its first orbital test flight, which could take place in April.
Elon Musk confirms that the Starship rocket is ready and preparing for launch.
On April 7, SpaceX confirmed via its official Twitter account that Starship has been fully assembled for launch operations at Starbase. The company’s action team is progressing towards launching the rocket in the first integrated test flight of Starship and is awaiting regulatory approval.
On April 10, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on his official Twitter account that the Starship rocket is ready, with launch operations “expected to take place around the end of the third week of April.”
Starship is SpaceX’s long-awaited passenger transport spacecraft, designed to carry astronauts and large payloads into deep space, including missions to the Moon and Mars. The most important aspect of this spacecraft is its reusability and its coupling with the massive rocket, known as Super Heavy, to lift the spacecraft off the Earth’s surface.
SpaceX introduced the mission objectives with a 5-minute 3D graphic video about the astronaut mission to Mars, completing refueling operations and Musk’s vision of a base on the Red Planet.
Graphic simulation of the Starship mission to Mars. (Video SpaceX).
SpaceX’s Starship has been fully prepared for the launch test at the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The launch of Starship has faced multiple delays, including a significant setback in the summer of 2022 when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) determined that the launch would have some environmental impacts around the facility.
These challenges have largely been addressed, and the final condition for the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy launch rocket to take off is the permit from the FAA. “The FAA will only make a decision on the permit after the agency accurately determines that SpaceX meets all requirements for licensing, safety, and other regulations,” a spokesperson for the FAA stated in an email to The Street.
According to the FAA’s Action Plan Consultation, Super Heavy is tentatively scheduled for launch on April 17, with the next backup date being April 22. Sources from Ars Technica have indicated that SpaceX is working closely with the FAA and is awaiting the moment when the regulatory agency will finally issue the permit.
If the launch date is officially set for April 17 under FAA authorization, it means that SpaceX has only one week left to execute the Super Heavy launch, a feat never before accomplished in American space exploration history.
Once launched into orbit, Super Heavy and Starship will separate, with Super Heavy returning to the Gulf of Mexico while Starship will enter orbit. Shortly thereafter, Starship will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and land vertically in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
