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Enlarge (credit: Google)

Another executive has left Google Stadia, and this time it's John Justice, vice president and product head of Stadia at Google. Along with Phil Harrison, Justice was the face of the project, frequently giving interviews and talking to the press. Justice hasn't updated his LinkedIn profile yet, but following a report from The Information, Google told 9to5Google, "We can confirm John is no longer with Google, and we wish him well on his next step."

This latest departure is just another sign that Google's game-streaming service is circling the drain. A Bloomberg report from February revealed that the service missed Google's internal sales estimates by "hundreds of thousands" of users. Shortly before the release of that report, Google shut down its in-house game studio, Stadia Games and Entertainment, after less than two years of operation, citing the high cost of operating it. This move led to Stadia's other high-profile departure, the exit of Assassin's Creed co-creator Jade Raymond.

Justice's last big media hit was a video interview with The Escapist in December. This interview from just six months ago shows how quickly Stadia collapsed at Google, with Justice talking up in-house projects led by Raymond and saying that "over time, we're going to keep doing more and more in-house games." Two months later, all those plans would be canceled.

Enlarge / Beneath the South Texas clouds, SN11, the predecessor to SN15, met an unhappy fate just before it attempted a soft landing. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

The vehicle is ready, its paperwork is in order, and weather conditions should be reasonably good in south Texas Tuesday. All of this points toward SpaceX attempting to launch its newest Starship prototype—SN15—later this afternoon.

Local officials have authorized a road closure from noon (17:00 UTC) on Tuesday through 8 pm local time (01:00 UTC Wednesday). The end of this closure coincides with sunset at the launch site, which will come shortly after 8 pm. In addition, in its daily operations plan, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that the launch is scheduled for Tuesday.

This is an important mission for SpaceX. Already, as part of this experimental test campaign, SpaceX has lost four full-scale Starship prototypes—SN8, SN9, SN10, and SN11—in flights since December. Just one of these four vehicles has made a soft landing, SN10 in early March, but due to a fuel line problem, it exploded about 10 minutes after touchdown.