SpaceX will launch its 1st-ever Starship V3 megarocket today. The stakes couldn't be higher

There's a lot riding on the debut flight of SpaceX's Starship V3 megarocket — not the least of which are NASA's Artemis moon landing ambitions. The Starship launch is scheduled to take place today (May 21) from SpaceX's Starbase test site in South Texas, during a 90-minute window that opens at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT; 5:30 p.m. local Texas time). You can watch it here at Space.com when the time comes and see our latest Starship V3 launch updates for more. The flight will be the 12th overall for Starship, and it will be broadly similar to previous efforts — a suborbital jaunt that ends with controlled ocean splashdowns of Starship's Super Heavy booster and its Ship upper stage. But the vehicle involved is quite new, and SpaceX expects a lot out of it. A bigger (and better?) Starship megarocket The 408-foot-tall (124 meters) V3 ("Version 3") is bigger and more powerful than previous Starship iterations, which were already the biggest and most powerful rockets ever built, and it sports a number of other important upgrades as well. For starters, it's outfitted with the new V3 Raptor engine — 33 of them on Super Heavy and six on Ship — which provides more heft, and a far more streamlined design, than its predecessors. The V3 Super Heavy also now has just three grid fins (which help it steer its way back to Earth for recovery and reuse) instead of four. …