How to watch SpaceX launch Starship on fourth test flight

SpaceX's Starship spacecraft separating from the first-stage Super Heavy rocket in the vehicle's second integrated test flight in November 2023. — SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft separates from the first-stage Tremendous Heavy rocket throughout the automobile’s second built-in take a look at flight in November 2023. SpaceX

SpaceX is focusing on Thursday, June 6, for the fourth take a look at flight of its Starship rocket.

Affirmation of the schedule got here after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) handed SpaceX a launch license for the mission on Tuesday.

SpaceX’s 120-meter-tall automobile is essentially the most highly effective ever to fly and includes the Tremendous Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft. The maiden take a look at flight of the Starship occurred final yr, however ended inside minutes after an anomaly occurred shortly after liftoff. The second flight went a step additional by reaching stage separation, whereas the third take a look at two months in the past met a lot of its mission objectives and was by far essentially the most profitable of the three efforts.

Engineers are working towards making the Starship a totally reusable system. Whereas SpaceX presently solely recovers the first-stage of its reliable Falcon 9 rocket, the plan is to land and reuse each phases of the Starship, although this received’t be occurring throughout these early checks.

As soon as absolutely licensed, the rocket will probably be used for crew and cargo missions to the moon and presumably Mars. SpaceX has additionally stated that the spacecraft may at some point be used for high-speed transportation, which it says will make any vacation spot on Earth reachable “in a single hour or much less.”

Easy methods to watch

SpaceX will launch the Starship on its fourth take a look at flight from the corporate’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The mission crew is aiming to launch the rocket at 8 a.m. ET/11 a.m. PT on Thursday, June 6. The launch window will final two hours.

SpaceX will start a reside stream of the occasion on its X (previously Twitter) account about half-hour earlier than liftoff. These tuning in will witness an astonishing spectacle because the Tremendous Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines blast the large rocket skyward. A number of digital camera angles — together with a number of hooked up to the 2 rocket phases — will seize the assorted phases of the mission because it progresses, together with the dramatic launch, stage separation, and the insertion of the Starship spacecraft into orbit.

If there are any modifications to the schedule, we’ll make sure you replace them right here, although you can even keep watch over SpaceX’s X account for the very newest updates.