SpaceX is hoping that with two successive days of scrubs behind it, it will be able to launch its massive Starship rocket on its third launch attempt on Tuesday evening.
It’s first launch attempt on Sunday was prevented when an issue with the liquid oxygen ground systems connected to the upper stage caused a scrub about 40 minutes before flight. Then on Monday, anvil clouds in the vicinity of the pad prevented a launch about halfway through SpaceX’s available hour-long window.
SpaceX is targeting liftoff at the opening of the window on Tuesday, which begins at 6:30 p.m. CDT (7:30 p.m. EDT / 2330 UTC). Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about two hours prior to liftoff.
Flight 10 represents a nearly identical mission plan as Flight 9, which launched at the end of May. SpaceX will not attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster, tail number B16. Instead, SpaceX plans to preform a controlled water landing in the Gulf and demonstrate that it can safely land in an off-nominal scenario.
The plan is to use two of the three center engines for the landing burn along with one of the ten middle ring engines. The idea is to show that if one of the center engines were to fail during a landing attempt, the Super Heavy booster could still be safely caught by the launch tower.
Meanwhile, Ship 37 will attempt to perform a nominal, suborbital flight. That includes deploying simulator Starlink satellites, relighting one of its Raptor engines and performing a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean a little more than an hour after liftoff.
Flight 6 was the last time a Ship made it safely to the Indian Ocean, but that was using a Block 1 version of the upper stage. All three previous launches of the 171-foot-tall (52 m) vehicle experienced issues that either prevented it from completing its ascent burn (as seen during Flight 7 and Flight 8) and from deploying the Starlink simulators or performing the Raptor relight in space (seen Flights 7-9).
Before Flight 10 could take place, Ship 36 exploded at SpaceX’s test site called Massey’s and heavily damaged several pieces of critical infrastructure there. That anomaly during fueling for a six-engine static fire test was attributed to the failure of one of the spacecraft’s composite over wrapped pressure vessels (COPVs).
SpaceX’s Starship uses gaseous nitrogen for its environmental control system. The issue was caused by “undetectable or under screened damage” to a COPV.
