Elon Musk finalizes the launch of the Starship, the largest rocket in the world, for this Monday

Image of the Starship docked at the top of the Super Heavy propellant, on the launch pad of the SpaceX base in Texas.- (AFP)

Mars will be a little closer to Earth this week.

The United States aeronautical authority, the FAA, authorized SpaceX this Friday for the first comprehensive flight test of its gigantic 120-meter-tall and nine-meter-diameter rocket, the Starship coupled to the Super Heavy propellant.

Elon Musk's company does not want to waste time and has everything ready to launch the most powerful rocket in history this Monday.

“SpaceX plans to conduct the first test flight of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket on Monday, April 17 from Starbase in Texas,” the company announced.

The 150-minute test window will open at 7:00 a.m. local time, 2:00 p.m. in mainland Spain.

SpaceX will broadcast the test live through its website and social networks.

The broadcast will begin about 45 minutes before takeoff, although the time cannot be guaranteed.

SpaceX has already revolutionized the aerospace industry with its recoverable rockets, which have made it cheaper to launch satellites and other devices.

The Starship has a more daring mission on its horizon: taking people to the Moon and to Mars.

The key for this to be viable, not only technically, but also economically, once again involves reusing the rockets as much as possible.

Starship's flight test window opens at 7:00 am CT tomorrow;

a live webcast will begin ~45 minutes before liftoff → https://t.co/bG5tsCUanp pic.twitter.com/mBGaFNwhaU

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 16, 2023

This will be the first test with the two sections of the Starship together and the first launch of the massive first stage booster rocket, dubbed Super Heavy.

On this occasion only the flight is tested.

There will be no people or satellites on board the rocket.

The plan is to send the spectacular spaceship from the Starship base in South Texas to near Hawaii.

The SpaceX base is near the beach of Boca Chica, about 30 kilometers from Brownsville.

According to the flight scheme published by SpaceX, the first stage of the rocket, the powerful propellant, will fall on the Gulf of Mexico.

The spacecraft will continue east, passing over the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans before splashing down near Hawaii with no landings attempted on this first test flight.

"With a test like this, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the likelihood of future success as SpaceX rapidly advances Starship development," the company says.

“I'm not saying it will reach orbit, but I guarantee excitement.

It won't be boring," Musk promised at a Morgan Stanley conference last month.

"I think it has, I don't know, with luck, a 50% chance of reaching orbit," he added, in statements collected by the AP agency.

Musk estimates that it will take him a couple of years to get his ship fully and quickly reusable.

The upper phase of the Starship already had its own flight tests starting in 2021. After several attempts that ended in what is euphemistically called RUD (

), that is, they crashed, the Starship SN15 achieved land upright in 2021 after ascending several kilometers into the stratosphere.

SpaceX is used to recovering its Falcon rockets over and over again, with which it launches satellites, of a different nature.

To date, the SpaceX team has completed multiple suborbital flight tests of Starship's upper stage from Starbase, successfully demonstrating an unprecedented approach to controlled flight.

These flight tests helped validate the vehicle's design, demonstrating that Starship can fly through the subsonic entry phase before restarting its engines and turning over to a vertical configuration for landing.

In addition to testing the upper stage of the Starship, the team has carried out numerous tests on the imposing Super Heavy gleaming stainless steel rocket, powered by methane-fuelled engines, including the simultaneous firing tests of 31 Raptor engines.

The rocket will launch from the world's tallest rocket launch and collection tower, 146 meters high.

SpaceX has a $3 billion contract from NASA to bring astronauts to the lunar surface beginning in 2025, in what is expected to be the first astronaut landing in more than 50 years.

The astronauts will travel in the Orion capsule both there and back, but will go down to the Moon using the Starship's upper stage spacecraft.

By authorizing this first test, the FAA has also provided information on the second and third tests: “On the first flight of the Starship/Super Heavy, the Super Heavy is expected to land intact and sink in the Gulf of Mexico, and that the Starship lands in the North Pacific Ocean.

An explosive event is expected to occur when the Starship impacts the surface of the North Pacific Ocean," it says in a document dated this Friday.

"On the second and third flights, the Super Heavy will land intact and sink in the Gulf of Mexico, while the Starship will disintegrate upon atmospheric reentry, with a fragment field in the North Pacific Ocean," he adds.

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