March 3 (UPI) — SpaceX on Monday will launch the eighth test flight of its biggest and most powerful rocket.
The liftoff is scheduled to take place during a 60-minute window opening at about 5:30 p.m. CT in south Texas at SpaceX’s Starbase site.
The live-streamed coverage will begin roughly 40 minutes prior to liftoff.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been developing Starship in its effort to ultimately help settle the moon and, ideally, Mars.
Its last launch on Jan. 16 failed right after liftoff when the upper stage of SpaceX’s uncrewed Starship rocket exploded minutes after liftoff, leading the aerospace company to declare the vessel a “loss.” It was the seventh test flight of the heavy-lift spacecraft.
“The most probable root cause for the loss of ship was identified as a harmonic response several times stronger in flight than had been seen during testing, which led to increased stress on hardware in the propulsion system,” according to a report on the investigation into the explosion.
“The subsequent propellant leaks exceeded the venting capability of the ship’s attic area and resulted in sustained fires,” it added.
On Monday, the test flight will deploy four dummy satellites similar to its next-generation Starlink broadband satellite models as a first test of a satellite deploy mission.
SpaceX officials say the Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and “are expected to demise upon entry” about 66 minutes after launch somewhere near the Indian Ocean off western Australia.
