Kathmandu: American entrepreneur Elon Musk will have another go shortly at launching his mammoth new rocket, Starship.
The vehicle’s maiden flight in April ended in spectacular style when it lost control and exploded four minutes after leaving the ground in Texas.
Debris from the 120m-tall (393ft) rocket fell into the Gulf of Mexico.
Engineers at Mr Musk’s SpaceX company have since made “more than a thousand” changes to Starship’s systems to try to make the vehicle more reliable.
Lift-off from the coastal town of Boca Chica is scheduled to occur within a 20-minute window, starting at 07:00 local time (13:00 GMT).
The planned mission profile will be broadly the same as before: to send the top part of the two-stage vehicle – the Ship – nearly one full revolution of the Earth.
The aim is for the uncrewed craft to make an ocean splashdown near Kauai, one of the islands in the Hawaiian archipelago.
If Mr Musk can get Starship working as designed, it will be revolutionary.
A fully reusable rocket capable of putting more than a hundred tonnes in orbit in one go would radically lower the cost of space activity. It would also assist the entrepreneur in his efforts to realise the long-held dream of taking people and supplies to Mars to establish a human settlement.
News Source: BBC