SpaceX May Attempt Starship Orbital Test Flight in March

SAN FRANCISCO:
Elon Musk has stated that SpaceX may attempt to complete the long-awaited orbital test flight of Starship as early as next month.

In response to a question from one of his Twitter followers on Saturday, which asked, “You back in Texas? Starship almost ready?”, Musk said the private space firm is targeting a March launch attempt.

“If remaining tests go well, we will attempt a Starship launch next month,” he tweeted.

In January, SpaceX completed its first-ever, full flight-like dress rehearsal for its deep space rocket Starship which is likely capable of taking astronauts to Mars.

The space company conducted a “wet dress rehearsal” with the 395-foot-tall (120 metres) Starship at its Starbase facility in south Texas.

“Starship completed its first full flight-like wet dress rehearsal at Starbase. This was the first time an integrated Ship and Booster were fully loaded with more than 10 million pounds of propellant,” SpaceX said in a tweet.

Meanwhile, NASA and SpaceX have set February 26 as the launch date for the Crew-6 mission, which will send four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for a six-month stay.

Crew-6 will send the SpaceX Dragon capsule Endeavour aloft atop a Falcon 9 rocket, which will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, according to a NASA blogpost.