SpaceX’s Starship megarocket will fly again this week, if all goes according to plan.
The company announced today (Feb. 24) that it aims to launch Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, for the eighth time on Friday (Feb. 28), pending regulatory approval.
The 403.5-foot-tall (123 meters) fully reusable vehicle will lift off from Starbase, SpaceX’s launch and manufacturing facility in South Texas, on Friday during a window that opens at 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT; 5:30 p.m. local Texas time). You’ll be able to watch it live; SpaceX will stream the launch beginning about 40 minutes before liftoff.
The most recent flight took place on Jan. 16. That mission was a partial success; SpaceX caught Starship’s giant first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, with the “chopstick” arms of the Starbase launch tower as planned.
Ship, the rocket’s 171-foot-tall (52 m) upper stage, was supposed to deploy a payload for the first time on Flight 7 — 10 mockups of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites — circle much of the globe and then splash down in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch. That didn’t happen, however; the upper stage broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean about 8.5 minutes into flight, apparently due to a propellant leak.
The goals on Flight 8 will be similar. SpaceX will go for another Super Heavy chopsticks catch, while Ship will try to deploy mock Starlink satellites — four of them this time — before coming down in the Indian Ocean.
“The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry,” the company wrote in today’s update. “A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned.”
(The full Starship vehicle features 39 Raptor engines — 33 on Super Heavy and six on Ship.)
Related: SpaceX catches Super Heavy booster on Starship Flight 7 test but loses upper stage (video, photos)
Starship Flight 7 breaking up and re-entering over Turks and Caicos pic.twitter.com/iuQ0YAy17OJanuary 16, 2025
The Super Heavy flying this mission sports upgrades over its predecessors, including advanced avionics and a more powerful flight computer, SpaceX wrote in the update.
The company made some changes to Ship as well, many of which will test the vehicle’s ability to come back to Earth for chopstick catches in the future.
“A significant number of tiles have been removed from Starship to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle. Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry,” SpaceX wrote in the update.
“Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable,” the company added. “But by putting flight hardware in a flight environment as frequently as possible, we’re able to quickly learn and execute design changes as we seek to bring Starship online as a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle.”
