SpaceX plans to send its giant Starship rocket into the sky from South Texas on August 24, aiming to steady the program after a tough run of setbacks on the ground and in flight.
Nearly three months have passed since the last Starship test. However, the achievement did not last. The upper part of the rocket broke apart as it came back through the atmosphere, and the booster blew up over the Gulf of Mexico during the landing.
A few weeks on, the troubles didn’t let up. During a static-fire test, the vehicle slated for Flight 10 erupted in an explosion that wrecked its test stand and left SpaceX scrambling to slot in a replacement upper stage for the mission.
The FAA has wrapped up its probe into the Flight 9 mishap, clearing a major obstacle and giving the company the green light to press forward with its next launch.
SpaceX’s back-to-back losses have lifted the stakes.
SpaceX often describes its playbook as “build-fly-fix-repeat.” Each Starship launch produces data that engineers feed back into design and operations. Still, the repeated loss of the Ship in flight has sharpened questions about when the massive rocket will carry payloads for paying customers and for NASA.
The company’s pace has been striking since the first Starship flight in April 2023. In May, SpaceX made history by reflighting a booster, showing that rapid reuse is within reach. Bringing the upper stage home, then landing it for reuse, the end goal, remains unfinished work.
In a filing submitted to Texas regulators this January, SpaceX disclosed that it has poured over $7.5 billion worth of investment in Starbase and the broader Starship program. The spending is not limited to Texas. The company recently informed Florida’s governor that it intends to invest an additional $1.8 billion to develop Starship launch facilities.
NASA is counting on Starship to deliver for its own timelines
SpaceX holds 2 contracts valued at $4 billion for the development of a Starship variant called the ‘Human Landing System’, which is intended to return astronauts to the moon as part of Artemis.
The mission targeted for that capability, Artemis III, is scheduled for 2027. Hitting that date will require more than successful launches and reentries.
SpaceX still has to validate the Ship’s reusable heat shield, carry out cryogenic propellant transfers in low Earth orbit, and ultimately land Starship on the lunar surface. Any one of those steps would be a first, but SpaceX needs to complete them all.
Bloomberg reported that the company reassigned a large number of engineers from the Falcon 9 project to Starship to push through the heavy-lift rocket’s open issues.
Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built. The stacked vehicle stands nearly 400 feet tall.
