Watch Live as SpaceX Tries to Break Starship's Explosive Losing Streak
The world's largest rocket is gearing up for its ninth flight after suffering back-to-back anomalies. SpaceX is prepping Starship for liftoff on Tuesday, hoping the rocket fares better this time around after several improvements since its last flight.
Starship is set for liftoff on Tuesday, May 27 during a launch window that opens at 7:30 p.m. ET. The fully integrated rocket will take to the skies for its ninth test flight from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The launch will be streamed live on SpaceX's website and through the company's page on X.
You can tune in 30 minutes before the scheduled launch time for the live webcast. You can also watch the launch via third-party providers, which we've provided below.
For its upcoming launch, SpaceX will use a Super Heavy booster that's flown before. The booster previously launched and landed during the rocket's seventh test flight on January 16, and 29 of its 33 Raptor engines have flown before. This will mark the first time SpaceX reuses a booster for its Starship rocket, which is a major step toward its reusability. Starship is a fully-reusable launch vehicle, meaning that both its Super Heavy booster and the upper stage, known as Ship, need to be caught mid-air by the 400-foot-tall Mechazilla tower.
SpaceX has been making major progress with Starship's 232-foot-tall (71-meter) Super Heavy booster, catching the booster during three out of four attempts thus far. The same can't be said for the rocket's upper stage, however, which suffered glitches during the last two test flights.
During Flight 7 in January, Starship's upper stage suffered an engine problem that forced an early shutdown, causing it to break apart and rain down bits of rocket debris over Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean. Less than two months later, during Flight 8, the upper stage suffered another major failure, spinning uncontrollably before breaking apart a few moments after launch. Both times, the upper stage was supposed to make a soft splashdown off the coast of Western Australia about an hour after liftoff.
The failure prompted an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which conducted a safety review of the rocket. Last week, the FAA gave SpaceX the green light to launch Starship for its ninth test flight. SpaceX also reported that it had identified the problem and made 'several hardware changes,' ahead of Tuesday's liftoff, according to a statement. The company said that one of the rocket's engines failed to fire during the boostback burn, which was likely due to overheating of the engine's ignition device. SpaceX added insulation to Starship's engines this time around, hoping that it won't run into the same issue again.
During Tuesday's flight, Super Heavy 'will fly a variety of experiments aimed at generating data to improve performance and reliability on future boosters,' SpaceX wrote. The rocket will also re-attempt objectives that it failed to meet during the last two test flights, including the deployment of payloads and 'multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the vehicle to the launch site for catch,' according to SpaceX.
SpaceX's Starship is a key part of NASA's planned return to the Moon as part of the agency's Artemis program, which aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface in 2027. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is also betting on the company's Starship rocket for his plan to land humans on Mars. Ahead of Tuesday's launch, Musk will hold a company talk titled, 'The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary,' which will be live streamed on X at 1 p.m. ET.
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