Elon Musk confirms Starship will launch on Friday, SpaceX reveals mission goals

Elon Musk recently confirmed SpaceX will be conducting the 8th flight for Starship on Friday, and now the Super Heavy booster has made it to the launch pad.

SpaceX has shared new photos of Super Heavy sitting between the chopstick arms on the Mechazilla launch tower at the Starbase launch site in South Texas. For those who don't know, Starship consists of two parts: the first stage is named Super Heavy, which is a booster that measures 233 feet tall, and the second stage is called Ship, which measures 171 feet tall. Together, these two stages create Starship, a monstrous 400-foot-tall rocket that is slated to be the transportation method to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

As for Flight 8, SpaceX is making its mission objectives quite similar to Flight 7, with the space fairing company setting the goal of Super Heavy landing back on the Mechazilla tower for another chopstick catch, and Ship will attempt to deploy four dummy Starlink satellites during its flight. During Flight 7, Ship was carrying 10 mock Starlink satellites but was unable to deploy them; SpaceX hopes to change that with Flight 8. After the hopefully successful deployment of the Starlink satellites, SpaceX intends to splashdown Ship in the Indian Ocean just off the coast of Western Australia approximately 66 minutes after launch is initiated.

"During the flight test, Starship will deploy four Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites, as the first exercise of a satellite deploy mission. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned," writes SpaceX

Check out the full mission goals for Flight 8 here.