by Elon Musk SpaceX is preparing for the next test of his Starship Megarocket on Sunday after a number of youngest mistakes that some observers have caused to question their viability.
The most powerful carrier vehicle in the world will take off from the company of the company in South Texas for his tenth flight at 6:30 p.m. local time (2330 GMT).
The mission aims to bring the upper stage through a series of exams while it flies halfway worldwide before spraying into the Indian ocean.
In contrast to the latest attempts, SpaceX will not try to catch the Booster stage with the huge “Chopstick arms” of the starting tower.
Starship is of central importance for Musk’s ambition to colonize Mars, while NASA on a modified version is to serve as Artemis Lunar Lander to return to the Moon.
But all three previous test flights in 2025 ended in the upper stage – twice in fiery cascades over Caribbean islands and once after reaching the room. In June, another upper stage exploded on the floor during a “static fire” test.
SpaceX’s Etho’s “FAIL FAST, LEARN FAST” has long been attributed to his remarkable track record and thanks to his Falcon rocket family, offers a commanding global lead in starts.
But the setbacks of the Starship setbacks have raised doubts as to whether the company can repeat this success with the greatest and most powerful rocket in history.
– ‘Much pressure’ – –
Dallas Kasaboski, a space analyst by the consulting company Analysys Mason, told AFP that the recent failures lose the golden reputation of Sheen from SpaceX.
“I think this mission has a lot of pressure,” he said. “We had so many tests and it has not proven reliably – the successes have not exceeded the failures.”
Will Lockett, a former engineer, continued and argued about his Substack newsletter that the lack of heavy payload tests showed that “the concept of the spaceship is fundamentally incorrect”.
He added: “SpaceX builds up spaceships that are easier to increase the payload to usable levels, but makes it much weaker than they should be” – which leads to structural failures in the recent tests.
Headlines like “Is Elon Musk’s spaceship damn?” In New York Magazine, the exam strengthened.
Musk has put the future of the company through the starship and plans to withdraw its current generation of rockets and spaceships in favor of the new system.
Even if the tenth test is successful, impressive technical hurdles remain the full and quickly reusable production of the system at low costs that it can refuel in the orbit, a prerequisite for low-surface missions.
Nevertheless, SpaceX pushes forward and increases the frequency of starts despite criticism of environmental groups of ecological effects and the establishment of new facilities in Florida, including the start and landing pads in the Kennedy Space Center.
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