SpaceX said in a statement that the launch window will open at 6:15 p.m. CDT on Monday as the rocket prepares to launch from the company's Starbase compound in Texas. The launch will be livestreamed on Musk's social media platform, X.
The space exploration company warned that the schedule of the launch is likely to change "as is the case with all developmental testing."
The warning comes after a series of explosive test failures and incremental milestones across ten prior Starship flights, including multiple booster explosions, loss of vehicles during stage separation, and limited success achieving orbital velocity.
SpaceX revealed that the booster used for the upcoming flight previously flew during the eighth test flight. It will lift off with 24 reused Raptor engines and attempt to land in the Gulf of Mexico rather than return to the launch site.
The primary test objective of this launch, SpaceX said, is to demonstrate a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next generation Super Heavy rocket.
During the descent, SpaceX plans to fire 13 engines at the start of the landing burn before switching to five to steer the rocket. That's more than the three engines used in earlier tests. The new setup is meant to give the rocket more control and serve as a backup if any engines shut down.
The booster will finish its descent using three central engines, hover briefly above the water, and then drop into the Gulf of Mexico, which SpaceX called the "Gulf of America" in keeping with the Trump administration's unofficial name of the gulf. SpaceX says the planned descent will help engineers measure how the rocket behaves as it transitions between the different burn stages.
The upper stage, known as Starship, will carry eight mock Starlink satellites that are the same size as the next generation of SpaceX's Internet satellites. The test also will include an attempt to restart one of its engines while in space -- an important step toward making the spacecraft reusable.
This flight will test several upgrades aimed at helping Starship eventually fly back to its launch site in Texas. SpaceX engineers have even removed some of the heat-shield tiles on purpose to see how the unprotected areas hold up when re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
Before it splashes down in the Indian Ocean, Starship will perform a banking maneuver to simulate how future flights will steer during their return paths.
The test is significant because NASA plans to use SpaceX's troubled Starship for its Artemis program to return to the moon while it remains unclear if Starship will be able to deliver on that promise. Meanwhile, China's National Space Administration is making progress on its goal of placing astronauts on the moon by 2030.
"The China National Space Administration will almost certainly walk on the moon in the next five years," Bill Nye, the chief executive of the nonprofit exploration advocacy group The Planetary Society, said recently.
Nye, best known as a children's entertainer, called the lunar race "a turning point" in the history of space exploration.
Also on Monday, SpaceX plans to launch Project Kuiper KF-03 around 8:41 p.m. EDT from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. That launch has already been delayed four times since it was first expected to launch earlier this month.
The Project Kuiper KF-03 launch will use a Falcon 9 rocket to send a batch of 24 satellites into low Earth orbit for Amazon's Project Kuiper internet service. It will mark the second launch for the Falcon 9's first stage booster, tail number B1091.
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