SpaceX’s Starship SN4 prototype passes another, tougher pressure test: a test flight could be just around the corner

SpaceX’s latest Starship prototype keeps passing tests, edging closer and closer to a highly anticipated test flight.

The SN4 vehicle, the latest pathfinder for SpaceX’s Starship Mars-colonization spacecraft, aced a high-pressure and high-simulated-thrust trial at the company’s Boca Chica facilities in South Texas.

But the SN4 looks poised to leave terra firma for the first time soon. Musk has said he wants the vehicle to make an uncrewed test flight to an altitude of about 500 feet (150 meters), and the prototype has now checked off a lot of boxes on the road to lift-off. That’s probably as high as the SN4 will get. SpaceX is already building its successor, the three-engine SN5, which Musk has said will target a test-flight altitude of 12 miles (20 kilometers).