SpaceX Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Follow SpaceX Starship launch countdown: all of the news on its first test flight The 394-foot launch system, which is comprised of the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft, is known collectively as Starship. SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster comes equipped with 33 powerful Falcon Raptor engines and is designed to be reusable. However, SpaceX wasn’t going to take advantage of this feature this time around, as the booster was supposed to drop into the Gulf of Mexico shortly after launch instead of attempting to land upright. According to SpaceX, the goal of today’s test was to “inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship,” even if things don’t go as planned during the flight. SpaceX’s launch system will eventually help ferry both astronauts and cargo to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. It’s the same system that NASA will use to bring astronauts back to the Moon during the Artemis III mission in 2025. This test flight has been a long time coming, with some SpaceX diehards uprooting their lives and moving near the rocket’s launch site just to witness its tests. SpaceX received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) earlier this month following years of fiery testing as SpaceX prepared for its first official Starship test flight. Update April 20th, 9:48AM ET: Updated to note that the flight was cut short. Update April 20th, 10:25AM ET: Added comment from Elon Musk. Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Emma Roth