Starship ready for 5th test flight, SpaceX says

SpaceX has tested its brand new Starship megarocket ahead of its next test flight, the company announced.

Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, consists of two fully reusable components: a massive first stage called Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship, or simply Ship. A stacked Starship has flown four times to date, but SpaceX plans to increase that number soon.

“Starship and Super Heavy Flight 5 are ready to fly, pending regulatory approval,” the company said via X Thursday afternoon (August 8). “Additional thruster acceptance testing and Flight 6 vehicle testing are planned pending flight authorization.”

This regulatory approval would likely come from the US Federal Aviation Administration, which issues licenses for launches from US soil.

Related: SpaceX tests Starship Super Heavy booster ahead of fifth flight (video)

As for the second part of this article: SpaceX intends to catch the returning Super Heavy during the Flight 5 mission, using the launch tower’s “wand” arms at its Starbase site in South Texas.

SpaceX has never attempted this before. During the first four Starship test flights, which took place in April 2023, November 2023, March and June of this year, the company aimed to land Super Heavy in the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX accomplished this feat during the June flight, which the company hailed as a complete success. The Starship’s upper stage also splashed down, surviving reentry into Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

This was a first for both stages of Starship: neither the Super Heavy nor the Ship hit the water intact during any of the first three test flights.

SpaceX has already tested the engines on both stages of the Flight 5 vehicle, firing all 33 of the Super Heavy’s Raptor engines on July 15 and all six of the Ship’s Raptors on July 26. These tests, known as static fires, are common pre-launch tests for rockets.

SpaceX has big plans for Starship, seeing the vehicle as a breakthrough that will finally make colonization of the Moon and Mars economically feasible.