SpaceX rolls Starship Flight 6 Super Heavy rocket to pad ahead of Nov. 18 launch (photos)

Both pieces of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket have made it to the launch pad ahead of their expected test flight on Monday (Nov. 18).

SpaceX rolled Starship‘s huge first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, out to the pad at its Starbase site in South Texas today (Nov. 14). The company documented the move via X, in a post that included three photos. 

One of those images shows Super Heavy atop Starbase’s orbital launch mount, with the vehicle’s 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper stage, known as Starship or simply “Ship,” sitting nearby. Ship made the trip to the pad on Tuesday (Nov. 12).

The next major step will be to lift Ship onto Super Heavy, which SpaceX will do using the tower’s “chopstick” arms. This will create a nearly 400-foot-tall (122-meter-tall) behemoth, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.

Starship has flown in this fully stacked configuration five times to date, most recently on Oct. 13. That test flight was a success; Super Heavy came back down to Earth for a historic landing atop the launch mount, aided by the chopsticks, and Ship splashed down in the Indian Ocean as planned.

Related: Starship and Super Heavy explained

Flight 6, which will launch Monday during a 30-minute window that opens at 5:00 p.m. EST (2100 GMT), will look a lot like Flight 5, if all goes according to plan.

“The next Starship flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online,” SpaceX wrote in a mission description. 

“Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean,” the company added.

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, “Out There,” was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.