by SpaceX will try to start his newly designed Starship rocket on Monday in a critical test by Elon Musk’s Mars ambitions.
The 10th flight test of the world’s largest rocket takes place three months after the starship, and its super heavy booster was lost both after they were withdrawn from the company’s Starbase facility in Texas.
Two earlier flights in 2025 both ended with fiery explosions. The goals for today’s start will be to restore both the booster and the spaceship in the upper stage.
The most recent start was originally supposed to take place on Sunday, but according to SpaceX had to be postponed due to “problems with Ground Systems”.
The new start window will open on August 25th at 6:30 p.m. local time (Tuesday, 12:30 p.m. BST), whereby a live stream is available on the SpaceX website.
Last week SpaceX presented a new design of the landing fins with which the super heavy booster led back to the ground.
According to SpaceX, the new components are 50 percent larger and stronger than earlier versions.
A nasty fin of the new Super Heavy Booster from Starship (SpaceX)
The starship, which is 122 meters high, when it is fully stacked, is developed to bring crew and freight to the moon and Mars.
SpaceX has concluded a billion-dollar contract with the NASA to send astronauts to the moon as part of the U.S. Wolfrauma agency Artemis program, but failed starship tests and other delays mean that this mission was pushed back from December 2025 to 2026.
At the beginning of this year, Mr. Musk said that the Starship would start on Mars next year with the humanoid robot optimus from Tesla.
“If these landings are going well, human landings can start until 2029, although in 2031 it is more likely,” he said in one post to X.
The Tech billionaire previously predicted in 2017 that the Starship would make it onto the Red Planet by 2022, whereby people arrive until 2024.
Mr. Musk’s ultimate goal for the huge rocket is to build a fleet of several thousand spaceships in order to build a permanent and self -sufficient human colony on Mars by 2050.
According to Mr. Musk, future versions of the spacecraft will then be used to travel “to other star systems”.
