SpaceX is counting down to the first test flight on Monday of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, designed to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars and beyond.
SpaceX is counting down to the first test flight on Monday of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, designed to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars and beyond.
The giant rocket is scheduled to blast off from Starbase, the SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:00 am Central Time (1300 GMT).
Fallback times are scheduled for later in the week if Monday’s launch attempt is delayed—something billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk said is a distinct possibility.
„It’s a very risky flight,“ Musk said in a live event on Twitter Spaces on Sunday. „It’s the first launch of a very complicated, gigantic rocket.
„There’s a million ways this rocket could fail,“ he added. „We’re going to be very careful and if we see anything that gives us concern, we’ll postpone.“
Musk said he wanted to „set expectations low“ because „probably tomorrow will not be successful—if by successful one means reaching orbit.“
The US space agency NASA has picked the Starship spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the Moon in late 2025—a mission known as Artemis III—for the first time since the Apollo program ended in 1972.
