SpaceX prepares upgraded Starship rocket for first test flight since October

SpaceX loaded more than 11 million pounds of super-cold methane and liquid oxygen into its Starship rocket on Monday. The company had halted a fueling attempt on Saturday due to a technical problem. This follows a successful test-firing of the booster's 33 Raptor engines on May 6, marking the first time SpaceX ignited a complete set of the upgraded Raptor 3 engines.

At launch, the rocket will produce approximately 18 million pounds of thrust, about 10 percent more than the previous Super Heavy booster generation, according to SpaceX specifications. The scale is enormous. For instance, the internal transfer tube in Version 3 that carries methane fuel from the top of the booster to the engines is roughly the same size as the first stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which has a diameter of about 12 feet.

This will be the 12th full-scale Starship test flight and the first since last October, following delays in readying the V3 model. The launch will occur from a new pad at Starbase, located roughly 1,000 feet west of the departure point for all previous Starship test flights in Texas.

SpaceX plans to target a controlled splashdown of the upper stage in the Indian Ocean just over an hour after liftoff. On future flights, the company intends to bring the upper stage back to Starbase for capture by the launch tower's mechanical arms, a technique already demonstrated with the Super Heavy booster. The flight path will also change, moving southerly over the Gulf of Mexico between the northeastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba's western tip, rather than over the Florida Straits.

Before launch, SpaceX workers must install the rocket's self-destruct system hardware and pyrotechnics. This requires temporarily removing the upper stage from the booster. The company is also awaiting a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration.