SpaceX's third Starship test flight today: Check timing and live-streaming details

Elon Musk-owned SpaceX is all set to attempt the third flight test of its giant Starship rocket on Thursday, the company said. The window to launch the Starship rocket on Thursday -- and on Friday, as a backup -- is from 7 am to 8:51 am CDT (starting around 5:30 pm in India).

Starship, touted as the world's most powerful rocket, is crucial for US space agency NASA's plans for landing astronauts on the Moon later this decade as well as Musk's hopes of eventually colonising Mars, AFP reported.

This comes after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees the launch site safety, on Wednesday granted a license to SpaceX for the test launch of the Starship rocket system from Boca Chica, Texas.

“The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements,” read the FAA statement.

The previous two attempts ended up in explosions before reaching the planned splashdown target in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. FAA's regulatory sign-off comes less than 24 hours before Starship's targeted launch time.

A towering two-stage rocket system that will serve as the core of Musk's space launch business, Starship will try to fly further and achieve more testing goals than its previous two flight tests, including reignition of the system's upper stage engine and opening its payload door in space.

As per the company, the test flight on Thursday will launch on a trajectory bound for the Indian Ocean, a flight profile that the company has picked to enable the mission's new test objectives.

As part of its $4 billion contract with SpaceX, NASA is planning to use Starship in the coming years to send the first human crew to the Moon's surface over half a century after the Apollo era.

The Musk-owned company's Starship test flight is an early demonstration on a long path to proving itself capable of safely transporting astronauts to the moon, a feat that will entail other NASA spacecraft and necessitate more fuel for Starship delivered in space by a fleet of ‘tanker’ refilling Starships, Reuters reported.

The Starship rocket should fly ‘hundreds’ of uncrewed flights before humans climb aboard, the SpaceX CEO earlier said.

In recent months, NASA officials have emphasised the necessity for speedier progress on the rocket's development as it competes with China, which plans its own crewed moonshot by around 2030.