UPDATE: SpaceX has launched the rocket. Check out these spectacular images from the test flight.
SpaceX is about to launch the Starship — the world’s most powerful rocket — for the ninth time, and you can watch the event in real time.
The launch window for the ninth flight test of Starship opens on Tuesday, May 27, at 6:30 p.m. CT (7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT).
A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, and you can watch it on SpaceX’s X account.
The imminent flight test marks the first launch of a flight-proven Super Heavy booster, SpaceX has confirmed. The booster previously launched and returned on Starship’s seventh flight test, which took place in January.
The Super Heavy will also carry with it a range of experiments designed to generate data to help improve the performance and reliability of future boosters.
But if you’re tuning in hoping to see if SpaceX can nail another spectacular landing of the booster, which involves a pair of giant mechanical arms clasping the vehicle as it comes home shortly after deploying the Starship spacecraft to orbit, then you’ll be disappointed. For this mission, SpaceX is trying out a more propellant-efficient descent, and so to “maximize the safety of launch infrastructure” at its Starbase site in Boca Chica, Texas, it will send the booster into the ocean.
As with every Starship flight, don’t expect everything to go entirely smoothly.
“Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable,” the company said prior to Tuesday’s test. “But by putting hardware in a flight environment as frequently as possible, we’re able to quickly learn and execute design changes as we seek to bring Starship online as a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle.”
SpaceX wants to use the Starship for the first crewed flight to Mars, which could take place in the 2030s. Before that, the Elon Musk-led spaceflight company wants to send an uncrewed Starship to the red planet as early as next year. NASA also wants to use the Starship vehicle to send crew and cargo to the moon, and a modified version of the Starship spacecraft will be used to put NASA astronauts on the lunar surface in the Artemis III mission, currently set for 2027.
