SpaceX is making final preparations for the eighth flight test of its Starship megarocket on Friday.
As part of the buildup, the Elon Musk-led spaceflight company has just shared a cinematic look at the Starship’s most recent flight test, which took place in January.
It also posted photos (below) of the soon-to-fly Super Heavy booster on the launchpad at SpaceX’s launch facility near Boca Chica, Texas.
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Super Heavy on the launch pad at Starbase ahead of Starship's eighth flight test pic.twitter.com/MdiIQMy5EF
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 25, 2025
When the upper-stage Starship spacecraft is placed on top of the world’s most powerful booster in the next day or two, the entire Starship vehicle will stand at an incredible 120 meters.
Friday’s uncrewed test mission will once again attempt the impressive “catch” maneuver, which involves two giant mechanical arms on the launch tower securing the Super Heavy booster as it returns to Earth minutes after deploying the Starship spacecraft to orbit. SpaceX has achieved the feat twice so far, and once perfected it will allow the company to reuse the booster multiple times, bringing greater cost efficiency to future Starship missions.
The spacecraft is also designed to land following launch — whether on another planet or back on Earth — but during the integrated flight tests SpaceX has been performing controlled landings of the Starship in the Indian Ocean. But in last month’s test, a technical failure caused the Starship to burn up over the Caribbean in a dramatic event that was captured on video.
The goal is for NASA to use the Starship for crew and cargo missions to the moon as part of the Artemis program starting in 2027. However, Musk is keen to shift the focus to Mars in a bold bid to get the first humans to the red planet by the end of this decade. But given how often Musk’s target dates slip, don’t be surprised if such a mission doesn’t happen until the 2030s at the earliest.
Commenting just ahead of Friday’s eighth test of the Starship rocket, SpaceX said: “As always, success comes from what we learned, and this flight test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary.”