SpaceX to try to launch first Starship orbital flight on April 17

SpaceX will try to launch the first orbital test mission of its huge Starship vehicle on April 17.

SpaceX has been targeting April 17 for the Starship flight for the past week or so, according to Space.com.

That plan was tentative, however, as the company still needed to secure a launch license from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

It's tentative no longer.

At 5:50 p.m. EDT (2150 GMT) on April 14, the FAA announced the granting of the license, ending a review that lasted more than 500 days. Mere minutes later, SpaceX firmed up its launch plans.

Starship consists of a giant first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 metres) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship. Both of these vehicles are designed to be fully reusable, and both are powered by SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engine — 33 for Super Heavy and six for Starship.

As the above tweet notes, the upcoming test flight will lift off from Starbase, SpaceX's facility in South Texas. It will involve a Super Heavy prototype called Booster 7 and the Ship 24 upper-stage variant.

If all goes according to plan, Booster 7 will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico about 20 miles (32 kilometres) off the Texas coast around eight minutes after liftoff. Ship 24, meanwhile, will keep flying, conducting a partial lap of Earth before coming down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

SpaceX has big plans for Starship. The company believes the giant vehicle, which stands 394 feet (120 metres) tall fully stacked, will make settlement of the moon and Mars economically feasible.