SpaceX plans to launch its giant Starship rocket system into orbit for the first time in early December, a demonstration flight that is important as it aims to send NASA astronauts to the moon in the coming years, a US official said on Monday, according to Reuters.

SpaceX, billionaire Elon Musk’s company, has struggled for years to send its massive, state-of-the-art rocket system into orbit from the company’s private launch facilities in Texas, where it launched only prototypes of the upper half of the Starship up to an altitude of about 10 km to demonstrate landing attempts.

December’s mission will test the entire system for the first time, using the company’s 70-meter superheavy booster to lift the 50-meter Starship spacecraft into orbit.

1. The Starship will be 50 meters tall and 9 meters in diameter, have a large cargo bay and six Raptor engines.

2. About “Superheavy” Elon Musk said that it will be “the largest flying object ever created.” It will have more than 30 Raptor engines and will be a super powerful missile. The Super Heavy stage will have a height of 69 meters and a tank capacity of 3,400 tons of fuel, almost three times that of the Starship stage. The next generations will have a capacity of 3,800 tons.

“We are tracking four major Starship flights. The first one will be in December,” said Mark Kirasich, a senior NASA official overseeing the development of the agency’s Artemis lunar program, during a live meeting of NASA’s Advisory Board.

Further ground tests of the rocket and regulatory changes could delay the first orbital mission beyond December.

The US Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees the safety of commercial launch sites, has not yet issued a mission license for SpaceX, which is part of Musk’s growing universe of companies that also includes Tesla and Twitter.

Thus, Starship will be the successor to the fleet of reusable Falcon 9 rockets of the company.

In 2021, NASA selected the SpaceX Starship to land humans on the moon around 2025, for the first time since 1972.

That mission, under the roughly $3 billion contract, requires additional spaceflight tests beforehand, which could delay the 2025 landing mission.

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