SpaceX has completed rollout and stacking of Ship 37 atop Super Heavy Booster 16 at its Starbase facility in Cameron County, Texas, setting the stage for the Starship program’s tenth integrated test flight. The fully assembled, 403-foot rocket was placed on Launch Pad 1 late Saturday, with a 60-minute window opening at 6:30 p.m. Central Time on Sunday, 24 August. Engineers earlier loaded eight Starlink satellite simulators into the vehicle’s payload bay and finished final checkouts, including a payload-door exercise and flight-software updates. The company puts the probability of acceptable weather at liftoff at 45 percent. The flight plan calls for Booster 16 to execute a flip, boost-back burn, two-engine hover and controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The upper stage will attempt an in-space Raptor relight, release the dummy satellites, and gather data on heat-shield materials and flaps during re-entry before splashing down in the Indian Ocean. A backup engine ignition test is also scheduled during ascent. Starship’s Block 2 variant has yet to achieve all mission objectives after three partial failures this year. A successful Flight 10 would provide critical data for NASA’s Artemis lunar lander version of Starship and for SpaceX’s longer-term Mars plans. The launch is part of a crowded weekend on global pads. Rocket Lab’s Electron completed its 70th mission from New Zealand on Saturday, and a SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off early Sunday from Cape Canaveral carrying more than 5,000 pounds of NASA science experiments and supplies to the International Space Station on the CRS-33 mission.
NASA Science, Cargo Launch on 33rd SpaceX Resupply Mission to Station https://t.co/wo6REIu6ad NASA’s SpaceX 33rd commercial resupply mission successfully launched to deliver supplies and science investigations to the International Space Station from Sp… https://t.co/jujDtgN9a7
Expedition 73, your order of new science and supplies is out for delivery after the @SpaceX #Dragon lifted off at 2:45am ET today and is due for arrival at 7:30am on Monday. More... https://t.co/cM93gkMwGE https://t.co/QX9NVCYrPQ
Expedition 73, your order of new science and supplies is out for delivery after the @SpaceX #Dragon lifted off at 2:45am ET today and is due for arrival at 7:30am on Monday. https://t.co/cM93gkMwGE https://t.co/JT0pzS7Tbv