SpaceX announced Thursday that it intends to conduct a dress rehearsal next week for the first flight of its Starship rocket, intended to carry humans to the Moon and Mars, a test flight that could take place as early as the following week.
“The spacecraft is complete,” the space company said in a tweet along with photos of the rocket showing all of its stages: the first and second stages have so far only conducted separate test flights.
33 Raptor engines
SpaceX needs the green light from the US civil aviation regulator (FAA) to launch such a flight. The company had carried out in February, at its base in Boca Chica, in the extreme south of Texas, an impressive test of the 33 Raptor engines of the first stage of Starship, named Super Heavy and 69 meters high.
Only the second stage of the rocket made suborbital test flights, several of which ended in impressive explosions. Starship was chosen by NASA to take its astronauts to the Moon during the Artemis 3 mission, which is officially scheduled for 2025.
The Artemis 2 crew, who must go to the Moon and then avoid it without landing there, will be transported by NASA’s SLS rocket, the most powerful in the world today… while they wait for Starship.
Source: BFM TV
