Elon Musk‘s rocket manufacturing company SpaceX is now gearing up for yet another test flight of its Starship launch vehicle, possibly before the end of the year.
What Happened: The company has moved the booster of the Starship launch vehicle to the launch pad at Starbase for testing ahead of its upcoming flight, the company said in a post on X on Friday. The post was accompanied by a picture of the 232-foot-tall booster.
The company, however, did not specify when the next flight would be.
Starship is currently in the testing and development phase.
The company has conducted six test flights of the vehicle thus far starting in April 2023 but without a payload. The last flight test took place in November.
Why It Matters: The Starship vehicle is part of big dreams. While NASA is looking forward to taking humans back to the surface of the Moon after a gap of over 50 years with the help of a custom version of Starship, Musk is dreaming of taking humans to the planet Mars aboard Starship.
"…I would not be surprised if we fly 400 Starship launches in the next four years,” SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said at the Baron Investment Conference in New York last month.
SpaceX is a privately held company. Unlike Musk’s publicly held EV company Tesla, SpaceX does not divulge its financials periodically.
“We are going to make some money on Starlink this year. But ultimately I think Starship will be the thing that takes us over the top as one of the most valuable companies,” Shotwell previously said.
For the upcoming flight test, SpaceX will attempt to land the Starship spacecraft in the ocean yet again.
"We will do one more ocean landing of the ship. If that goes well, then SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower," Musk previously said.
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Photo courtesy: SpaceX
