SpaceX was poised to launch another critical test flight of its massive Starship rocket on Sunday, a mission that comes with heightened stakes following a series of explosive setbacks this year.

Starship is set to take off from SpaceX’s South Texas launch facility, called Starbase, during a window that opens at 6:30 p.m. local time. The mission will be the rocket’s 10th major test flight.

SpaceX has been periodically launching Starship on a series of test missions designed to ready the vehicle for lofting satellites – and eventually people – to Earth’s orbit and beyond. Yet the first two flights this year blew up within minutes, a third failed to deploy dummy satellites and spun out of control, and the most recent rocket exploded on a test stand in June during fueling.

Those failures ha

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