BOCA CHICA, Texas —SpaceX has pushed the launch time of its massive Starship launch again, but the liftoff is still slated for Thursday morning.  

Countdown to Starship launch

The launch is now being targeted at 9:25 a.m. ET as the Starship team is keeping an eye on the winds, SpaceX posted on X, formally known as Twitter.

The 110-minute launch window was originally set for 8 a.m. ET, but SpaceX pushed the time back to 8:02 a.m. ET. Then SpaceX pushed it to 9:10 a.m. ET so that boats in the splash down areas have time to get out, stated SpaceX.

On Wednesday afternoon, the California-based company announced that it would be testing its 397-foot-tall stacked Starship for a third time on Thursday from its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

SpaceX was waiting for the FAA to grant its approval for the third flight attempt. The company announced last week that it was aiming for Thursday for the launch date.

About Starship

Starship is where SpaceX’s hopes and dreams are stored. If all goes well, it will take humans back to Earth’s moon and eventually, it will go to Mars.

It is a two-stage heavy lift launch rocket that will be a fully reusable transportation system to carry humans and cargo into space. The rocket is known as the Super Heavy and the spacecraft is called Starship, but collectively, they are known as Starship.

Both the Super Heavy rocket, with its 33 Raptor engines fueled by thousands of tons of sub-cooled liquid oxygen and liquid methane, and the Starship are designed to be reusable.

The Starship is planned to carry 100 crew members and cargo to Earth orbit, the moon and eventually Mars, according to the ship’s user guide.

What to expect for the third-test flight

For the third test, SpaceX stated it will build on the two previous launches and plans to showoff a series of demonstrations.

“The third flight test aims to build on what we’ve learned from previous flights while attempting a number of ambitious objectives, including the successful ascent burn of both stages, opening and closing Starship’s payload door, a propellant transfer demonstration during the upper stage’s coast phase, the first ever re-light of a Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry of Starship. It will also fly a new trajectory, with Starship targeted to splashdown in the Indian Ocean,” SpaceX explained.

The Starship spacecraft is expected to splash down.

Starship’s flight history

SpaceX’s first launch attempt of Starship happened on April 2023, which saw a series of failures that caused the rocket to explode.

The FAA issued a series of requirements before the California-based company could try again, which included 63 corrective actions.

For the second test in November 2023, SpaceX was forced to blow up Starship.

The new stage separation, called hot stage separation, worked as designed, but it resulted in the Super Heavy rocket’s destruction.

“Following stage separation, Super Heavy initiated its boostback burn, which sends commands to 13 of the vehicle’s 33 Raptor engines to propel the rocket toward its intended landing location. During this burn, several engines began shutting down before one engine failed energetically, quickly cascading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly of the booster,” SpaceX described.

SpaceX believed the likely cause of the booster blowing up was a filter blockage where liquid oxygen fuel goes to the engines.

Minutes later after the hot stage separation, SpaceX could not regain a signal to the Starship spacecraft and the company was forced to destroy it.

“A leak in the aft section of the spacecraft that developed when the liquid oxygen vent was initiated resulted in a combustion event and subsequent fires that led to a loss of communication between the spacecraft’s flight computers. This resulted in a commanded shut down of all six engines prior to completion of the ascent burn, followed by the Autonomous Flight Safety System detecting a mission rule violation and activating the flight termination system, leading to vehicle breakup,” the company stated.

SpaceX stated it has corrected the issues (17 corrective actions) that occurred during the second flight attempt.