SpaceX’s Ship spacecraft is now on the pad at Starbase in southern Texas awaiting static engine tests ahead of its 11th flight atop the first-stage Super Heavy booster.
The Elon Musk-led spaceflight company shared three images (below) of the upper-stage Ship on X on Wednesday. One shows the vehicle being rolled to the pad, while the other two show the Ship clamped between the launch tower’s giant mechanical “chopstick” arms.
SpaceX is expected to fire the Ship’s engines on Wednesday or Thursday. It’s already tested the Super Heavy engines, so if the Ship’s static fire goes well and no anomalies occur, SpaceX will be ready to launch the 121-meter-tall Starship rocket on its 11th test flight.
It’s not clear when the Starship will take its 11th flight, but around the end of this month or early next seems like a safe bet.
The Starship flew for the first time in April 2023, while its most recent flight took place last month, on August 26.
The company is hoping to ramp up the launch frequency over the coming months, with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) having already given it permission to fly up to 25 times a year.
At the current time, all of the Starship launches take place from Starbase. But as part of efforts to increase the rocket’s launch cadence, SpaceX is building new launch facilities at Cape Canaveral in Florida, where the company already operates regular missions using its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.
While the Starship has made significant progress since its maiden flight more than two years ago when it blew up just seconds after launch, there’s still a long way to go before the rocket becomes operational.
Indeed, SpaceX is under pressure to make swift improvements to the vehicle, as NASA wants to use a modified version of the Ship to land two astronauts on the lunar surface in the highly anticipated Artemis III mission, which is currently set for 2027. The Starship could also be used to send the first humans to Mars, though that’s unlikely to happen until the 2030s at the earliest.
