The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that Elon Musk’s SpaceX can launch its second try to send its huge Starship rocket into space.
Soon after getting the go-ahead, SpaceX said on the social media site X that Starship’s second flight test would happen “targeting Friday, November 17.”
At 8 a.m. ET, there will be a two-hour time for the launch. SpaceX is going to livestream the launch of Starship. The show will start about 30 minutes before the rocket takes off.
Starship was first launched in April. It flew for a few minutes before exploding in the air, causing a lot of damage to the infrastructure on the ground and raising worries about the environment. Before giving out a new flying licence for the second time, the FAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worked together to do a safety review.
In a report made public on Wednesday by the organization, FWS discovered that the rocket launch and the damage it caused to the pad infrastructure did not have any long-term detrimental effects on the environment. The agency said that SpaceX will still help protect the launch pad, lower sound waves and noises, and help put out fires to lessen the damage to the area.
“The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy, and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency said in a statement Wednesday.
Starships are a key part of both NASA’s plans to send humans back to the moon and SpaceX’s goals in the launch and satellite markets. It has a lot more launch power than any other rocket on the market right now.
In the past few years, Musk has moved people and tasks to the rocket’s Stargaze development site in Texas in order to get the vehicle off the ground.
