SpaceX Starship Launch Today Is First Flight Since January Explosion

Elon Musk’s rocket company will open a one-hour launch window Monday for the eighth flight of the SpaceX Starship from Starbase in south Texas.

Blastoff could occur as soon as 6:30 p.m. ET on March 3 after being delayed from Feb. 28. The massive rocket will again conduct a suborbital flight test, with the Super Heavy booster separating shortly after liftoff for a return to the launch tower and the Starship spacecraft continuing on its journey before attempting a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The attempt comes on the heels of a seventh flight in January that ended early and abruptly in what the company jokingly refers to as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” or “RUD,” better known to laypeople as an explosion. The Starship upper stage broke up shortly after the Super Heavy booster was successfully caught back at the launch pad for the first time by the SpaceX “chop sticks” mechanism.

Fireworks are Part of the Process

For over two decades, the company has pushed an aggressive cycle of technology development and iteration as part of Musk’s vision to drive down the cost of space access and exploration by making as many components reusable as possible.

Legacy space programs run by state-funded agencies like NASA typically designed rockets to be single-use, with the spent boosters usually falling into the ocean. Components that make it to space might remain there or eventually burn up on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

The Space Shuttle represented a move towards reusability, but was relatively limited in its range, never making it far beyond orbit.

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SpaceX and Musk, by contrast, have grand ambitions of sending thousands of people to establish a presence on Mars and perhaps elsewhere in the solar system. Such a grandiose vision requires numerous trips between Earth and other worlds, driving the desire for reusability.

But dialing in such reusable space exploration systems has been difficult and generated the spectacle of many RUDs or explosions in the development process. SpaceX has often celebrated such incidents, which the FAA characterizes as “mishaps,” as a part of the process that may not be desired, but is not totally unexpected either.

“Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable,” the company said in a statement. “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.”

How to Watch

The launch will be livestreamed via the SpaceX X.com feed below.

During the flight, SpaceX plans to test Starship’s ability to deploy payloads by simulating the deployment of Starlink satellites with what amount essentially to four dummy satellites.

The team is also hoping to gather data on how Starship’s upper stage responds to certain stressors that will enable it to return to the launch site following the completion of a future mission.