After a successful third test launch just last week, SpaceX anticipates that a fourth test launch will occur sooner than ever before.
Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX, spoke at Satellite 2024, a conference and exhibition for the satellite industry, and says that SpaceX is looking at early May for a fourth test flight, while touting their internal excitement from the most recent launch.
“It was an incredibly successful flight. We hit exactly where we wanted to go.”
“We’ll figure out what happened, and get back to flight. Hopefully in about six weeks flight four will happen in the beginning part of May.”
Starship, SpaceX’s Super Rocket, was lost after almost an hour of the ship being in-flight, meaning the company could not finish it’s full flight, where it would’ve landed in the Indian Ocean. Nonetheless, progress has undoubtedly been made from test flight one to test flight three.
Early May would be the fastest turnaround from one flight to the next. The first test flight was in April 2023, with the second being in November of the same year, six months apart. Test two to test three was 4 months in-between test flights.
