SpaceX is aiming to fly its next-gen Super Heavy booster next month, according to a recent post on X by the company’s CEO, Elon Musk.
As part of the Starship rocket that also includes the upper-stage Ship spacecraft, the Super Heavy is the most powerful booster ever built and has so far flown 11 times, with varying degrees of success.
SpaceX has just rolled out the new rocket, called Booster 19, for preflight testing, and on Sunday it shared some video clips captured by a drone. You can watch the footage by selecting the top left image in the post below.
The third version of SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster stands at 124.4 meters, making it just over a meter taller than its predecessor.
For the first time, it features Raptor 3 engines instead of Raptor 2s, with upgrades including greater thrust and better efficiency.
The new rocket design also helps to increase the Ship’s payload capacity by some 40 tons, increasing it to 100-plus tons for missions in which both the Super Heavy and Ship can be recovered.
Version 3 comes with new docking adapters, too, for the important in-orbit fuel transfer process that will allow the Ship to fly onwards to other celestial bodies such as the moon and even Mars.
Notably, the 12th Starship flight will be the first to launch from SpaceX’s newly built Pad 2 at its Starbase site in Boca Chica, Texas. Up to now, all flights have started at Pad 1, which is being rebuilt. SpaceX also has plans to begin launches from a new pad on the Space Coast in Florida later this year as it seeks to rapidly ramp up Starship testing.
SpaceX has yet to share a detailed flight plan for its upcoming Starship test, so we don’t currently know whether the Super Heavy will land back at base or on water. As for the Ship, It seems likely that the upper stage will attempt another controlled landing in the Indian Ocean, though hopefully at some point this year we’ll witness the first attempt by SpaceX to bring the Ship back to Starbase.
NASA is closely watching Starship’s progress as it’s planning to use a modified version of the Ship to land two astronauts on the lunar surface in the Artemis III mission currently scheduled for 2027, though that date could slip.