SpaceX’s Starship passed its wet dress rehearsal in South Texas with flying colours on Monday. In a vehicle first, SpaceX successfully loaded liquid oxygen and liquid methane into the vehicle’s Super Heavy first stage and Starship upper stage.
SpaceX took to Twitter to showcase the dress rehearsal from its Boca Chica facility on Monday with a stunning drone flyover of the rocket on the launch pad.
Starship completed its first full flight-like wet dress rehearsal at Starbase today. This was the first time an integrated Ship and Booster were fully loaded with more than 10 million pounds of propellant pic.twitter.com/btprGNGZ1G
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 24, 2023
Per SpaceX, the test verified the full launch countdown sequence and tested flight-like operations.
The wet dress rehearsal clears the path for the first orbital test flight in the near future. However, SpaceX needs to check off a few more boxes before preparing for an orbital flight. This includes a test fire of all 33 of Booster 7’s Raptor engines in a static fire trial.
There is still no public launch date or window for the Starship, but with tests like this, we know the company is starting ramp up towards a launch in early to mid 2023.
