SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced that the Starship rocket is ready for launch from its facility in Texas, USA. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has scheduled a test flight for April 17, but the company must first obtain regulatory approval before the launch. The Starship is currently the most powerful rocket that can send people to the Moon and Mars, consisting of a giant first-stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft called Starship. Powered by SpaceX’s next-generation Raptor engine, both vehicles are made of stainless steel, which can be reused.
Musk has recently said that there is only a 50% chance that the first-ever orbital mission of SpaceX’s huge Starship vehicle will be a success. The company is building several other space vehicles at its facility in Texas, which will be launched in quick succession over the coming months. There is an 80% chance that one of them will reach orbit this year.
SpaceX’s commercial communications satellite Falcon 9 launched into orbit with a NASA Earth science instrument aboard last week. The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, carrying the Intelsat 40E satellite toward geostationary transfer orbit. The geostationary satellite, developed by Maxar Technologies, aims to provide access to the company and its customers throughout North and Central America.
The Starship rocket is a super-heavy-lift rocket and spacecraft designed to carry immense cargo and numerous astronauts into deep space. The 400-foot-tall stainless steel tower looms over NASA’s rocket, the Space Launch System, and has twice as much thrust. The rocket is fueled with 10 million pounds of liquid methane and oxygen, which can be stored at more manageable temperatures than liquid hydrogen.
Starship is intended to evolve into a fully reusable launch and landing system, making spaceflight more affordable to the average person. NASA plans to use Starships to land astronauts on the moon during Artemis III and IV, two upcoming missions that could come as early as 2025 and 2027, respectively. The space agency has tapped SpaceX to develop a human landing system version of Starship with a $4 billion contract. As part of the deal, the company will need to demonstrate an uncrewed test flight to the moon beforehand.
During Artemis III, Starship will transfer astronauts from NASA’s Orion spacecraft to the lunar south pole and back. In the fourth mission, Starship is expected to dock at a moon-orbiting space station, the yet-to-be-built Gateway, and ferry astronauts back and forth to the moon. If the Starship test flight is successful, it will be a crucial demonstration of hardware that NASA is depending on to get humans back on the moon in the next few years. It would also mean that Musk is one step closer to realizing his personal dream of building a city on Mars.
