The world’s most powerful rocket, SpaceX Starship, took to the air on its fourth test flight on Thursday morning.
It will be the fourth of a launch system that is vital to NASA’s plans to land astronauts on the moon later this decade and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s hopes of one day colonising the Red Planet.
The two-hour liftoff window from the company’s starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, opens at 7:00 a.m. local time (1200 GMT). Weather conditions look favourable and the Federal Aviation Administration has given the green light.
Three previous attempts ended in a fiery demise of the Starship, which the company says is an acceptable cost as part of its rapid trial-and-error approach to development. SpaceX said in a statement:
The fourth flight test turns our focus from achieving orbit to demonstrating the ability to return and reuse Starship and Super Heavy.
Super Heavy is the upper stage, while Starship refers to both the upper stage and the two stages together.
The flight path will be similar to the third test, which took place in March, in which Starship circled half the globe but was eventually lost on re-entry over the Indian Ocean at the 49th minute of flight.
Since then, SpaceX has made several software and hardware upgrades and hopes to achieve a soft landing of the upper stage in the Gulf of Mexico and a “controlled re-entry” of the upper stage.
Designed to be reusable, Starship is 397 feet (121 metres) tall with both stages together – 90 feet above the Statue of Liberty.
Its super-heavy launch vehicle has a thrust of 16.7 million pounds (74.3 meganewtons), nearly double that of NASA’s second most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System, although the latter is already certified and Starship is still under development.
