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In 2021, the company filed its first paperwork for the flight.
According to Elon Musk, SpaceX may attempt to complete Starship’s long-awaited orbital flight test flight next month. Musk responded to a question by one of his Twitter followers on Saturday, saying that SpaceX is planning to launch a rocket in March. “If all tests are successful, we will launch a Starship next month,” he wrote.
Starship’s orbital test flight date has been a moving target since the beginning of the year. There are reasons to believe that the rocket could fly next month. Starship completed its first-ever flight in January. SpaceX loaded both the stage and the car with more than 10,000,000 pounds of liquid oxygen fuel. The company also went through the countdown procedures that it will have to follow on launch day.
SpaceX has many tests to complete, but the most important is a static firing of all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy stage. SpaceX has not yet ignited more than fourteen engines simultaneously. SpaceX will have to change this if it wants to receive the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval for an orbital test flight. SpaceX had indicated that it was ready to conduct the static test fire by the end of January. This could have been as early as February 1. This didn’t happen. Musk’s comments would suggest that SpaceX will try the test sooner than expected.
