Keen to ramp up the frequency of test flights for its next-generation Starship rocket, SpaceX has moved the first-stage Super Heavy booster to the launchpad for preflight testing ahead of its seventh liftoff.
SpaceX shared an image of the 70-meter-tall Super Heavy booster standing on the launchpad. When the Starship spacecraft is stacked on top for the upcoming test, the vehicle reaches an astonishing height of 120 meters.
Flight 7 Super Heavy booster moved to the pad at Starbase for testing pic.twitter.com/IOnSMTjrTk
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 6, 2024
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Recent reports have suggested that SpaceX is targeting January 11 for the seventh orbital test flight of the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft (collectively known as the Starship), though SpaceX has yet to confirm this.
The rocket — the most powerful ever to fly — has been improving its performance with every flight since the first test in April 2023. That maiden flight lasted barely four minutes before the entire vehicle exploded in dramatic fashion over the Gulf of Mexico. The second flight, however, achieved stage separation, while the third saw the Starship reach space. And then the fifth flight performed a spectacular rocket landing that has to be seen to be believed. Bringing the first-stage booster home shortly after deploying the upper stage to orbit allows SpaceX to reuse it for multiple missions, delivering a significant efficiency boost to its spaceflight operations.
Once fully tested and certified, NASA and SpaceX want to use a modified version of the Starship spacecraft to land the first humans on the lunar surface since the final Apollo mission in 1972. The highly anticipated landing will be part of the Artemis III mission, which NASA recently announced would be pushed back by about a year to mid-2027. The delay follows the emergence of technical issues with the NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which will also play a key role in the Artemis III mission.
Future Starship missions could also involve sending the first humans to Mars, possibly in the 2030s.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk has also repeatedly suggested — including as recently as Sunday in a social media post — that the rocket could one day pave the way for humans to become multiplanetary by helping to set up a colony on Mars. Such a reality is surely a ways off, but with every Starship test, Musk believes his grand ambition is edging ever closer.