SpaceX has moved its big Tremendous Heavy booster to the launch pad forward of Sunday’s (Aug. 24) deliberate liftoff of the Starship megarocket.
The corporate introduced the milestone Thursday (Aug. 21) in a post on X, which featured three photographs of the transfer.
Sunday’s launch, from SpaceX’s Starbase web site in South Texas, will kick off the tenth take a look at flight of Starship, the totally reusable car that SpaceX is growing to ship folks to the moon and Mars. Liftoff is scheduled throughout an hourlong window that opens at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT; 6:30 p.m. native Texas time). You may have the opportunity watch the motion dwell on at House.com, courtesy of SpaceX, at launch time.
Starship, the most important and strongest rocket ever constructed, consists of two components — Tremendous Heavy and a 171-foot-tall (52 meters) higher stage often known as Starship, or just Ship. Each are made from stainless-steel and powered by SpaceX’s next-gen Raptor engine — 33 for Tremendous Heavy and 6 for Ship.
One of many photographs in Thursday ‘s X submit is a closeup of these engines, every of which has the phrase “Raptor” and a pair of stylized wings emblazoned on its nozzle.
Each Tremendous Heavy and Ship have handed engine assessments forward of Flight 10’s launch. SpaceX will subsequent transport Ship to the pad at Starbase and stack it atop Tremendous Heavy utilizing the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms.
Sunday’s flight would be the fourth of 2025 for Starship. On all three of this yr’s launches, SpaceX has misplaced Ship prematurely — twice lower than 10 minutes after launch, with the third failing during its reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.
If all goes to plan on Sunday, Super Heavy will make a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and Ship will come down in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.
