SpaceX ignited the engines on its newest Starship spacecraft recently to gear up for a coming test flight, which could be just a few weeks away.
The company performed a “static fire” with the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Starship upper stage on Friday afternoon (July 26) at its Starbase facility, near the South Texas city of Brownsville. We got a glimpse of the action, thanks to photos and a video that SpaceX posted to X on Saturday (July 27).
Static fires — in which engines are briefly ignited while a vehicle remains anchored to a launch or test pad — are a common prelaunch trial. And SpaceX is indeed prepping for a Starship flight; it conducted a static fire with this spacecraft’s first-stage mate on July 15.
It’s unclear when exactly Flight 5 will lift off. On July 5, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said Starship will fly again “in four weeks,” which suggests a target date of this coming Friday (Aug. 2) or thereabouts. But the company is apparently now targeting late August or early September, according to media reports.
Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built: Fully stacked, the vehicle stands nearly 400 feet (122 meters) tall. Both of its stages — the spacecraft, known as Starship or simply “Ship,” and the booster, called Super Heavy — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.
SpaceX thinks Starship’s combination of power and reusability will be revolutionary, making settlement of the moon and Mars economically feasible. NASA is on board; the agency picked Starship to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration.
Related: SpaceX test-fires Super Heavy Starship booster ahead of 5th flight (video)
Starship’s four test flights to date occurred in April 2023, November 2023 and March and June of this year. The vehicle has performed better on each successive flight. On the most recent mission, for example, Ship reached space and survived the return trip through Earth’s atmosphere, and Super Heavy hit its splashdown target in the Gulf of Mexico.
Flight 5 will apparently aim to blaze a new trail for the big booster. Musk has said the company wants to catch the returning Super Heavy with the “chopstick” arms of Starbase’s giant launch tower, a strategy that will enable more rapid inspection, refurbishment and reflight of the vehicle going forward.
Shambhu Kumar is a science communicator, making complex scientific topics accessible to all. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
