Starship launch - live: SpaceX performs crucial test of Musk’s Mars ambitions
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Elon Musk plans to use world’s biggest rocket to colonise Mars. SpaceX is set to launch its Starship craft on Wednesday in what will be a critical test of the world’s biggest rocket. The 123-metre-tall rocket, which Elon Musk hopes to use to colonise Mars, is scheduled to lift off from the company’s Starbase facility in Texas at 4pm local time (10pm GMT), with Starship featuring several major upgrades for its seventh flight test.
It features redesigned flaps that aim to improve the ship’s chances of surviving reentry without overheating, while the craft will also carry a payload for the first time. SpaceX hopes to deploy 10 fake satellites into orbit as part of a deployment test, while also attempting to catch the rocket’s booster at the launch tower using a ‘chopstick’ mechanism.
You can follow all the latest updates and analysis in the live blog below, as well as watch a live stream of the launch on this page around half an hour before the launch. After pushing back the launch, SpaceX now appears ready to perform the latest Starship flight test on Wednesday, with a 60-minute launch window opening at 4pm CT (10pm GMT).
The latest generation of Starship is bigger and hopefully better than all the ones that came before. Upgrades include smaller flaps, redesigns to the propulsion system, a 25 per cent increase in propellent volume, and a complete overhaul of the vehicle’s avionics.
It will also be the first time that SpaceX has carried a payload into space aboard a Starship rocket, albeit a fake one. 10 “Starlink simulators” aimed at mimicking the company’s space internet satellites will be deployed while in space, though they will be on a suborbital trajectory and will splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
