SpaceX’s huge superheavy engine rumbled for the first time during a launch test on Thursday, bringing the giant lunar and Mars rover closer to its first orbital flight in the coming months, a live stream from the company showed, according to Reuters.

A new model of the Starship rocket Photo: Reginald Mathalone-NurPhoto / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia

Thirty-one of the 33 Super Heavy Raptor rocket engines fired for about 10 seconds at SpaceX’s South Texas rocket facilities, CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter shortly after the test.

SpaceX, billionaire Elon Musk’s company, has been trying for years to send its huge, state-of-the-art rocket system into orbit.

About the “Superheavy” Elon Musk said that it will be “the largest flying object ever created.” It has over 30 Raptor engines and is 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.

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.