Thursday could be expected earliest for SN10's flight (Feb. 25).
SpaceX's latest prototype Starship has just been rumbling to life.
The SN10 Starship ("Serial No. 10") car carried out the first "static fire" which lit its Raptor engine for several seconds at 6:03 p.m. on Tuesday (23 February). SpaceX's South Texas site, close to Boca Chica Village's Gulf Coast Settlement, EST (2303 GMT).
The SpaceX standard pre-flight checkout is static fires in which engines are ignited briefly as a rocket stays on the ground. If the test today went well, SN10 will soon be launched on a 6-mile high (10 kilometers) demonstration flight into South Texas skies perhaps as early as Thursday, 25 February.
Super Heavy will sport some 30 engines, said the SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. The final ship has six Raptors and Super Heavy. Starship is enough to start off the Moon and Mars, but Super Heavy is necessary for the spacecraft to get off Earth.
Over the next weeks and months, we will probably see many more Starship Test Flights, no matter how well the launch of SN10 goes. Musk recently said that SpaceX is planning to launch this year an Earth orbit prototype, and Starship plans to regularly transport its people by 2023.
Source Space.com
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