SpaceX set for Starship launch 2 months after explosive test flight
The last time SpaceX launched its Starship and Super Heavy rocket, the upper stage disintegrated spectacularly over the Atlantic. Two months later, SpaceX is set to try again today with less explosive results.
The Jan. 16 launch saw a successful catch of the Super Heavy booster back at the Texas launch site, but the Starship spacecraft blew up after passing over the Gulf of Mexico with scenes of the streaking debris posted to social media from places like the Turks & Caicos.
The event grounded the in-development rocket, but the Federal Aviation Administration cleared it to launch again as of Feb. 26.
'After completing the required and comprehensive safety review, the FAA determined the SpaceX Starship vehicle can return to flight operations while the investigation into the Jan. 16 Starship Flight 7 mishap remains open,' the FAA stated. 'The FAA is overseeing the SpaceX-led investigation.'
Still, the FAA cleared today's attempt, the eighth suborbital launch of the massive rocket, during a 60-minute launch window that opens at 6:30 p.m. EST from Boca Chica, Texas.
'The FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight,' the FAA stated.
Once again, SpaceX will attempt a catch of the booster, while the upper Starship stage will fly to the east about halfway around the Earth and aim for a water landing in the Indian Ocean west of Australia.
'Several hardware and operational changes have been made to increase reliability of the upper stage,' SpaceX posted on its website.
The objectives that were not reached during the last attempt are on tap again. That includes a test run of payload deployment and reentry experiments that the company hopes will lead to a future launch with the upper stage landing back at the Texas launch site.
Four test payloads will simulate the size of SpaceX's Starlink satellites and follow the same trajectory of the upper Starship stage so they they burn up on reentry.
'Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable,' SpaceX posted. 'But by putting flight hardware in a flight environment as frequently as possible, we're able to quickly learn and execute design changes as we seek to bring Starship online as a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle.'
All test flights to date have taken place from Texas, but SpaceX has two launch sites planned from the Space Coast in Florida. It's already building out a tower at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39-A adjacent to where it launches Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions. It's also aiming to build out a tower at neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station taking over Space Launch Complex 37, which had been the home for United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy's final launches.
Environmental impact studies for both sites were started in 2024, but expected to be complete this year.
SpaceX's plans are to build up infrastructure in Florida and potentially other launch sites to get to hundreds and eventually thousands of Starship launches a year, part of Musk's goal of creating a colony on Mars.
NASA, though, is awaiting a working version of Starship to act as the human landing system for its Artemis III mission, which is aiming to fly as early as mid-2027, and would mark the first time humans, including the first woman, will have set foot on the moon since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.
NASA requires SpaceX to perform a successful uncrewed flight of Starship landing on the moon ahead of that mission as well.
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