Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing to begin its eighth flight tests of the spacecraft from Bocachica, Texas.
“Starship Flight 8 will fly on Friday,” SpaceX CEO Musk said in a X Sunday post.
For the first time, future flights will have multiple payload deployments and multiple experiments on re-entry with the aim of returning the upper booster to the location where it is activated.
The launch also includes the return and catch of the super-heavy booster, which blows up the rocket from the launchpad.
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Starship Flight 7 will be released from Starbase, Texas, before the top tier is lost. (AP News)
During flight testing, Starship will deploy four Starlink simulators. This is roughly the same size as the next-generation Starlink satellite, SpaceX said.
The StarLink simulator will be deployed in the same sub-orbit as Starship and is expected to burn out upon re-entry.
Although Starship is in space, SpaceX also plans to resettle a single Raptor engine.
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Starship Flight 7 will be released from Star Base, Texas. (AP News)
If everything goes as planned, the launch window will open at 6:30 PM ET.
The launch has been over a month since SpaceX launched the Starship Flight 7 from Boca Chica’s Starbase testing site, and as a result, Starship has experienced a “rapid unplanned disassembly” almost 12 minutes of its flight.
The Super Heavy Booster returned to Earth where he won a Star-based launch and a catch tower arm, making it his second heavy catch.
However, the spacecraft was not that successful.
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“The spacecraft experienced rapid, unplanned decomposition during the burning of the mountain climb,” SpaceX said in a statement on January 16th.
SpaceX has investigated why the spacecraft fell apart, even though the investigation remains open.
For Starship Flight 8, the FAA must grant approval. This could be provided in several ways.
In 2023, the FAA issued a five-year license to SpaceX for a launch from Texas. This will be reconsidered for all launches if there is a need to make corrections to something like the rocket’s trajectory. The FAA could grant approval once mission details and license changes are made, the FAA told Fox News Digital.
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But what goes on is an open investigation into the disaster of Starship Flight 7. To fly again, the investigation must be closed and the FAA must accept the findings. Specifically, the FAA will consider whether the incident will put public safety at risk.
At the time of this writing, the investigation had not been closed and the FAA had not given approval. Still, it is common for approval to be issued a day or two before release, the FAA noted.
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment regarding the issue in Fox News Digital.
Louis Casiano of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
