SpaceX’s Starship Could Launch In Just A Week
We have watched years of progress in Boca Chica Texas as SpaceX has developed, manufactured, and tested the Starship orbital launch system. From original star hopper tests to 10km flights, this next generation system has been making impressive progress. Not to mention all the work on various infrastructure and stage 0 at Starbase. All of which has lead up to the first orbital test flight, which is closer than ever before.
Recent news suggests that as soon as one week from now Starship could attempt its first orbital test flight. Between Ship 24 movement, Booster 7 testing, and navigational warnings, everything is hinting at an actual attempt within weeks. Most of these developments happened in just the last few days with activity ramping up.
As a fully reusable 120m tall rocket, Starship is meant to change how we access space and open up completely new opportunities in space. However, the upcoming launch will be the biggest challenge Starship has faced with plenty of opportunities for a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Here I will go more in-depth into the recent progress at Starbase, why this launch could be just weeks away, what to expect in the near future, and more.
New Developments
For the past couple of months, SpaceX has been getting ready for the first-ever Starship orbital test flight, which will use the Super Heavy prototype Booster 7 and a Starship vehicle Ship 24. Around the middle of last month, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said that the flight, from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, might launch as soon as the third week of April. While by no means the most reliable estimate, its a good sign especially when you look at some of the progress being made. Just days ago on the 1st Eric Berger tweeted saying, “A booster on the mount, and a rocket at the pad. It is almost time for someone to hold Starship’s beer.” Elon replied mentioning, “More than days away, but hopefully not many weeks away”
Besides what people are saying, big developments are actually being made a Starbase and various locations surrounding this mission. For one, SpaceX rolled Ship 24 out to Starbase’s orbital launch pad just days earlier. And on Monday the 3rd, the company conducted fueling tests with Booster 7 on the orbital launch mount, with Ship 24 on the ground nearby. Another interesting new update is that navigational warnings have been issued for the Starship orbital attempt. Those warnings cover a window of April 6 to April 12. While exciting, SpaceX is still waiting for its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Lastly, Eric Berger reported that “NASA is reserving the use of its high-altitude WB-57 aircraft for observations of the Starship test flight on April 10 and 11. The agency is closely tracking SpaceX’s progress with the massive rocket, as it intends to use the Starship vehicle as a lunar lander for its astronauts as part of the Artemis Moon missions.” The WB-57 is a mid-wing, long-range aircraft capable of operation for extended periods of time from sea level to altitudes well in excess of 60,000 feet. Two crew members are positioned at separate tandem stations in the cockpit. The pilot station contains all the essential equipment for flying the aircraft. The sensor operator station contains both navigational equipment and controls for the operation of the payloads and payload support systems located throughout the aircraft. The WB-57 can remain aloft for approximately 6.5 hours, flying both day and night, so long as separation from hazardous weather can be maintained. With a range of 2,500 miles, the aircraft can be deployed to any continent.
It is important however to point out that this information is not confirmed and 100%, plus the fact that historically, Wb-57 dates have rarely been accurate. Either way, we are seeing multiple different aspects of this launch coming together. At the core of this program, testing will continue with the hopes of promising results. While there are a bunch of different things and external factors that could push this launch back, for the first time in a while almost everything is falling into place. Something we will have to keep an eye on in the coming weeks.
Future of Starship
One of the biggest factors holding back this launch is the FAA license. Back around February, Gary Henry, senior advisor for national security space solutions at SpaceX, gave insight into future operations and some of the final tests, but also information on the FAA. He said the company still needs an FAA launch license but expects that in the “very near future” they will receive it. He also told the audience to expect some “must-see TV” sometime in March. Obviously its now April, however, the excitement and confidence of the launch date is important.
SpaceX has announced and planned several Starship launch dates in the past two years that have been delayed due to licensing requirements from the FAA. The FAA considers factors such as environmental concerns and impacts on the local community near Starship’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. The FAA conducted a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) that was delayed several times by regulatory complications and public interests before being completed in June 2022. At that time, the agency told SpaceX it must take more than 75 actions before launches can be approved. In the time since then, SpaceX has not released its action plan for addressing those actions. Not to mention, FAA assessments do take time and this makes it uncertain how close SpaceX would be in reaching a March launch date.
Around this same time period, the FAA proposed fining SpaceX $175,000 for failing to submit required positional information about satellites ahead of a Starlink launch in August 2022, according to the Washington Post. The FAA and SpaceX have not made clear in media reports whether this problem has occurred on any other of the dozens of Starlink launches SpaceX has conducted. In reality, the FAA’s main focus is public safety and making sure that if Starship’s first orbital test flight does not go as planned, nobody gets hurt in the process. With such a unique and ambitious design, it’s hard to compare Starship to anything else that has launched in the past.
As far as the first orbital test flight launch profile, its going to be very interesting. It all begins with Starship launching and hopefully clearing the launch tower. This is a very big deal and one of the most important parts of the launch. If Starship were to explode on the pad it would not only stop the company from getting a bunch of valuable flight data but would more importantly destroy stage 0. Stage 0 consists of all the infrastructure and various systems at the launch pad that supports Starship. For example the launch tower and orbital launch mount both have been under construction for many months. An explosion that big and that close would cause some significant delays at the least. Thankfully, SpaceX is quite fast at building and is working on multiple different options.
Ideally, however, Starship soon clears the pad after liftoff and begins accelerating up. The Super Heavy rocket will fly from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site eastward, over the Gulf of Mexico. For this test, the booster will not attempt a landing. After stage separation, the Starship upper vehicle is intended to reach orbital velocity before attempting a reentry into Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. If all goes well, it will make a controlled descent and landing into the ocean just north of the Hawaiian islands. Rather than put the company’s equipment that I just highlighted at an extra risk with a catch attempt and landing, SpaceX wants to ensure safety and drop the stages in the water. Assuming they both get to that point the amount of data would be incredible and the mission would be considered a massive success.
Looking at future operations again, with projects such as Artemis making descent strides, we are likely going to see a similar push from SpaceX on the lunar Starship. The Starship Human Landing System, is a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that will transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back. It is being designed and built by SpaceX under contract to NASA as a critical element of NASA’s Artemis program to land a crew on the Moon in the 2020s. This first orbital test flight will be an important milestone for this project which is right around the corner.
The mission plan calls for a Super Heavy booster to launch a Starship HLS into an Earth orbit, where it will be refueled by multiple Starship tanker spacecraft before boosting itself into a lunar near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). There, it will rendezvous with a crewed Orion spacecraft that will be launched from Earth by a NASA Space Launch System (SLS) launcher. A crew will transfer from Orion to HLS, which will descend to the lunar surface for a stay of several days which is to include five or more EVAs. It will then return the crew to Orion in NRHO. In the third phase of its HLS procurement process, NASA awarded SpaceX a contract in April 2021 to develop, produce, and demonstrate Starship HLS. A crewed flight will occur as part of the Artemis 3 mission, no earlier than April 2025, after an earlier uncrewed test flight successfully lands on the Moon and returns to NRHO. Something we can look forward to as time goes on.
Conclusion
SpaceX is closer than ever to an actual Starship orbital test flight. In the last few days alone a few major developments have been made with only a few final steps necessary before the launch can happen. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.