The launch from SpaceX Starbase in Texas is slated for no sooner than Thursday, with a 62-minute launch window beginning at 8:28 a.m. CST.
The test flight is highly anticipated because it represents a crucial step toward sending a manned mission back to the moon and later to Mars.
The rocket will be one of the largest vehicles ever sent into space. Starship's size is particularly significant because it can carry both crew and cargo into space simultaneously.
The Starship and Super Heavy stack is 394 feet tall. SpaceX constructed a nearly 500-foot tall launch and catch tower at the Starship base in Boca Chica, Texas. It is used to stack the first-stage booster and upper-stage spacecraft and serve as a launchpad.
A previous launch attempt was scrubbed on Monday when a pressurization issue with the first stage was reported about 9 minutes before launch. NASA Space Flight reports that a stuck pressurization valve was the issue. SpaceX then shifted focus and treated the pre-launch process as a wet dress rehearsal, Space.com reports.
"The point of the countdown is to allow the teams to progress that T-zero time in a coordinated fashion and really to unveil any issues prior to the ignition sequence. So the countdown did its job today," Kate Tice, host of SpaceX launch coverage and manager of SpaceX Quality Systems Engineering, said during the launch broadcast.
SpaceX said a successful test of the spacecraft will be measured by "how much we can learn."
When Starship launches, it will fly over the Gulf of Mexico toward the Pacific Ocean, according to SpaceX. The first stage separation will take place about 2 minutes after launch, sending the Super Heavy booster into a descent into the Gulf of Mexico.
Starship's six Raptor engines will ignite seconds after separation and will keep running for more than 6 minutes before cutting off. It will coast for most of the remainder of the estimated 90-minute flight before descending and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. The spacecraft will not go into full orbit but will reach low-Earth orbit, re-entering about 77 minutes after launch.
"For the first flight test, the team will not attempt a vertical landing of Starship or a catch of the Super Heavy booster," SpaceX said.
The Super Heavy booster, equipped with 33 Raptor engines, is required to push Starship into orbit. Together, the engines will generate an estimated 16.5 million pounds of force. The engines burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane, which Space.com notes can be produced on Mars.
The Raptor engines, however, have yet to reach space. In February, Raptor engines were test fired, with 31 of 33 on the Booster 7 working.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk declared 31 engines would be enough to reach orbit.
"Team turned off one engine just before start and one stopped itself, so 31 engines fired overall," Musk tweeted. "But still enough engines to reach orbit!"
It was the largest number of simultaneous engine ignitions in history, according to SpaceX. The company describes the static fire sequence of the Raptor engines as "increasingly complex," underlining the importance of each step in the launch and flight process.
Thursday's scheduled launch will allow SpaceX to test several systems in action.
"SpaceX intends to collect as much data as possible during flight to quantify entry dynamics and better understand what the vehicle experiences in a flight regime that is extremely difficult to accurately predict or replicate computationally," SpaceX said of its objectives in a document submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration.
On Wednesday, SpaceX successfully launched a batch of second-generation Starlink satellites into orbit, following previous setbacks with the new line of satellite technology. Starship once was intended to carry Starlink V2 satellites into space, but because it remains in testing, those plans have been set aside.
In February, SpaceX launched 21 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into orbit, but the satellites deorbited sooner than expected. SpaceX then swapped the V2 out in favor of the Starlink V1.5 model in a launch in March.
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