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SpaceX's Starship — the largest and most powerful rocket ever built — is about to blast off in the biggest rocket launch in history, and you can watch the live stream here.
Elon Musk’s rocket will lift off from its Texas launchpad at 9:28 a.m. EDT (2:28 p.m. BST) embarking on a first-of-its-kind test flight in preparation for future crewed missions.
Why is it important?
The flight is the first test of the rocket system that SpaceX has said it will use to transport astronauts, spacecraft, satellites and cargo to locations in the solar system — both for its own purposes and on behalf of NASA. The U.S. space agency is slated to use Starship's Human Landing System for the Artemis 3 and 4 missions, transporting humans to the moon's surface for the first time since 1972. Starship can carry roughly ten times the payload of the current SpaceX workhorse, the Falcon 9 rocket.
Starship stands in preparation for launch at SpaceX's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas on April 19, 2023
(Image credit: SpaceX)
Why was the previous attempt scrubbed?
During the first attempt, on Monday (April 17), the rocket was fueled and readied, but the launch was stopped with nine minutes left on the clock, after a frozen valve caused pressurization problems in the Super Heavy booster.
On Sunday (April 16), Musk dampened hype for the upcoming launch, warning in a conversation on Twitter Spaces that many problems could arise and that he would consider the test a success if the launch just didn't "blow up the launchpad."
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"Success is not what should be expected," he said ahead of Monday's scrubbed launch. "It may take us a few kicks of the can here before we reach orbit."
Ben Turner is a U.K. based writer and editor at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.
