Chosen by NASA to land astronauts on the Moon in 2025, the Starship rocket will make a test flight this Monday from the SpaceX space base, located in Texas (United States). At 120 meters high, Starship is the largest rocket in the world. Developed by billionaire Elon Musk's company, it will make its first flight in its complete configuration. This rocket is intended for trips to the Moon, during the Artemis 3 mission in 2025, and then to Mars.

Live on YouTube

In the meantime, this first test flight can be followed live from your living room. Space X will open a livestream on its website and YouTube channel at 13:15 p.m. to allow Internet users around the world to witness the takeoff of the world's most powerful launcher, which according to PhonAndroid should benefit from an unprecedented thrust of 70 meganewtons. The flight of the mastodon could occur as early as 14 p.m., time from which a take-off window of 2:30 will open.


T-12 hours until the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket; targeting ~8:00 a.m. CT for liftoff → https://t.co/bJFjLCilmc pic.twitter.com/dZTNuOnKPr

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 17, 2023

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Indeed, SpaceX teams will wait for the perfect moment to proceed with the launch of Starship. If when you connect to the livestream, the rocket is still attached to the Earth: don't worry. This could be due to a climatic or technical imponderable. It is also due to bad weather conditions that the takeoff of the Ariane 5 rocket, initially scheduled last Thursday, was finally postponed by one day.

The "best screenplay"

As a reminder, Starship runs on liquid oxygen and methane. For the moment, only its second stage (the "Starship ship" which by extension gives its name to the rocket) has carried out suborbital tests at an altitude of about ten kilometers. If the experts' predictions prove correct, the first stage (dubbed "Super Heavy") should fall back into the Gulf of Mexico about three minutes after liftoff. The ship should continue its ascent and make almost a circle of the Earth before falling back into the Pacific Ocean.



For the boss of SpaceX, Elon Musk, this would be the "best scenario". According to the billionaire, the chances of reaching orbit are not optimal. "If we get far enough away from the launch pad before there is a problem, I will consider it a success," he said recently. He fears that the launch pad will melt and that this long-awaited flight will be postponed for several months.

  • Sciences
  • SpaceX
  • NASA
  • Elon Musk
  • Space