SpaceX has received the green light for the third test flight of the giant Starship rocket

(CNN) — SpaceX is set to once again fly its giant Starship rocket, the most powerful launch vehicle ever, after federal regulators approved the company’s plans for a third test flight.

Launches can occur at any time during the 110-minute window that opens 8:10 am CT (9:10 am ET) de this Thursday, according to SpaceX’s X account. A live stream of the event will begin on the company’s website approximately 30 minutes before takeoff.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches, gave SpaceX the final green light for the mission on Wednesday afternoon.

“The FAA has determined that SpaceX meets all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency said in a statement.

The test flight will take place in 2023 after two attempts to take the giant starship vehicle to orbital speed ended in explosions, with the spacecraft and booster bursting into flames before reaching their intended landing sites.

SpaceX is known for accepting major setbacks in the early stages of spacecraft development and says these failures help the company quickly implement design changes that lead to better results.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket is seen in an undated photo at the company’s launch base in Boca Chica, Texas. From SpaceX

Much depends on the starship’s ultimate success. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly called the rocket vital to the company’s founding mission: to take humans to Mars for the first time.

Crucially, the Starship spacecraft is also the vehicle that NASA has chosen to carry astronauts from the United States to the Moon for the first time in more than five decades as part of its Artemis program. The space agency is competing with China, aiming to be the first to develop a permanent lunar outpost and set the precedent for deep space colonies.

The US space agency has committed to invest up to US$4 billion in Starship. According to NASA’s current roadmap, Starship will complete the final phase of the agency’s manned mission to the Moon, removing astronauts from their spacecraft in lunar orbit and returning them to the surface. The first landing of an astronaut under the Artemis program is planned for September 2026.

Imagine the success of SpaceX

Musk indicated that he believes Starship has a good chance of successfully completing this third test flight.

“I don’t want to jinx it, but I think the probability of reaching orbit is good: 80%,” he said during a recent conversation posted on social media. “Certainly the third flight is a better rocket.”

Before Starship’s final test flight in November, Musk said the vehicle had about a 50% chance of success. The vehicle was not intended to orbit the Earth, but to reach the lightning speed that would be required when the vehicle entered orbit. (The spacecraft eventually reached a speed of about 24,000 kilometers per hour. To reach orbit, a speed of at least 28,163 kilometers per hour is normally required.)

November’s test flight marked a major improvement over Starship’s first liftoff in April 2023, when some of the rocket’s 33 main engines shut down and the vehicle began to fall into the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX destroyed the rocket just four minutes after its first flight to prevent it from straying from its path.

The Starship took off in November, successfully firing all its engines and completing a major flight milestone: stage separation. At that point the super heavy rocket booster, the lowest part of the rocket that provides the initial burst of energy at liftoff, separates from the upper starship spacecraft, allowing the vehicle to ignite its engines and continue the mission on its own. But after about 10 minutes of flight, the starship was finally destroyed. If everything had gone as planned, the mission would have lasted about an hour and a half.

SpaceX has said its approach to rocket development is moving toward speed. The company uses an engineering method called “rapid spiral development”. Basically, the process boils down to wanting to build prototypes quickly and voluntarily flying them to learn how to build faster than if the company relied solely on ground testing and simulation.

After Starship’s first and second test flights ended in explosions, the company immediately tried to frame the setback as a success. In a statement after the November launch, SpaceX said: “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve the reliability of Starship as SpaceX seeks to make life multifaceted.”