The American company SpaceX plans to send a prototype of the Starship spacecraft into Earth orbit for the first time in May, said the company's founder, Elon Musk, TASS reports.

“We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test,” Musk said in a Tweet Monday.

The reusable spacecraft Starship is designed for flights to Mars and is designed for 100 people. Prototypes of the ship have already made test flights several times with a return to Earth, but so far they have passed within the Earth's atmosphere. Of all the Starship flight tests, only the last, which took place in May 2021, passed without destroying the device.