Starship's Second Test Flight Nears, Elon Musk Signals Countdown

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has begun the countdown for the second test flight of Starship.

What Happened: “Getting back to productive matters, Starship flight 2 launches in ~6 hours!!” Musk wrote at night in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

The CEO also posted several pictures of the Starship stacked at Starbase ahead of its upcoming launch, including a short video of its 33 engines.

“Standing below Starship on the night before launch,” Musk wrote in another post.

The Starship is set to launch for the second time on Saturday at 7:00 a.m. CT. A live webcast of the flight test will commence 35 minutes before liftoff on SpaceX’s X account.

SpaceX was previously thinking of launching its Starship on Friday but then postponed it by a day to replace a grid fin actuator.

Why It Matters: SpaceX conducted the first test launch of Starship on April 20. The rocket exploded in less than four minutes after take-off. The failed test provided several insights which gave way to several upgrades, thereby increasing the chances of success on upcoming flight, SpaceX said.

Starship, SpaceX’s ambitious project composed of the super heavy rocket and the starship spacecraft, aims to create a fully reusable transportation system for crew and cargo missions to Earth's orbit, the Moon, and Mars. The vehicle is key to Musk’s dreams of making life ‘multiplanetary.’

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Image created with artificial intelligence on MidJourney and Official SpaceX Photos on Flickr