SpaceX is preparing to launch their new giant Starship rocket on an orbital test from its south Texas “Starbase”; after completing its orbital test, the giant rocket is now due to splash down in the Indian Ocean; earlier plans had it coming down just north of the State of Hawaii. Pending FAA approval, the launch could happen as early as 8am Eastern Time on March 14.
According to the document available on the FCC website when SpaceX initially filed flight plans for this historic rocket launch, the orbital test flight will lift off from Starbase, Texas. The “starbase” is located at SpaceX’s Boca Chica complex just north of the Rio Grande River on the Gulf Coast, just above the U.S. / Mexico border. The facility is just below the popular tourist destination, South Padre Island.
At approximately 170 seconds after lift-off in Texas, the Booster Stage of the Starship rocket will separate and perform a partial return. It is due to land in the Gulf of Mexico roughly 20 miles from the shore.
While the booster returns to water, the Orbital Starship will continue to fly up and out away from Texas, flying over the Gulf of Mexico and eventually through the Florida Straits. From there, it will achieve orbit.
Originally, the rocket was to orbit around Earth and crash into waters north of Hawaii; now, SpaceX says the rocket will cut its spaceflight short and splash into the Indian Ocean.
With this new flight plan, the rocket will perform different maneuvers in space to test-out its features. “This new flight path enables us to attempt new techniques like in-space engine burns while maximizing public safety,” SpaceX said in a statement.
In the paperwork filed with the FCC, SpaceX said they intend to “collect as much data as possible during flight to quantify entry dynamics and better understand what the vehicle experiences in a flight regime that is extremely difficult to accurately predict or replicate computationally.” To do this, SpaceX filed with the FCC to gain their blessing to use on-board telemetry systems to radio data to ground stations from both the Orbital and Booster stages of the rocket. “This data will anchor any changes in vehicle design…and build better models for us to use in our internal simulations.”
SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket – collectively referred to as Starship – represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, capable of carrying up to 150 metric tonnes fully reusable and 250 metric tonnes expendable. Starship is roughly 394 feet tall and 29.5 feet wide, making it many times larger than the U.S. Space Shuttle and even larger than the Saturn V, the largest rocket launched from U.S. soil which used for NASA’s lunar exploration program.
Before the launch happens, the FAA must license it. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licenses all U.S. based launches and must sign-off on SpaceX’s attempts to lift-off this giant rocket before it does. Earlier today, Elon Musk reposted on X a posting from SpaceX that said “The third flight test of Starship could launch as soon as March 14, pending regulatory approval.”
The FAA is in the process of reviewing the second flight test to make sure this next one is as safe as possible. On November 18, 2023, Starship successfully lifted off at 7:02 am. CT from Starbase in Texas. All 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy Booster started up successfully and, for the first time, completed a full-duration burn during ascent. Starship then executed a successful hot-stage separation.
“At vehicle separation, Starship’s upper stage successfully lit all six Raptor engines and flew a normal ascent until approximately seven minutes into the flight, when a planned vent of excess liquid oxygen propellant began. Additional propellant had been loaded on the spacecraft before launch in order to gather data representative of future payload deploy missions and needed to be disposed of prior to reentry to meet required propellant mass targets at splashdown,” wrote SpaceX in a statement released on February 26.
“A leak in the aft section of the spacecraft that developed when the liquid oxygen vent was initiated resulted in a combustion event and subsequent fires that led to a loss of communication between the spacecraft’s flight computers. This resulted in a commanded shut down of all six engines prior to completion of the ascent burn, followed by the Autonomous Flight Safety System detecting a mission rule violation and activating the flight termination system, leading to vehicle breakup. The flight test’s conclusion came when the spacecraft was as at an altitude of ~150 km and a velocity of ~24,000 km/h, becoming the first Starship to reach outer space,” Space X added.
In 2018, Musk unveiled his plans for this rocket, which he originally called “BFR” or “Big Falcon Rocket.” At that time, he planned to fly this new spacecraft around the Moon by 2023 and eventually use it to shuttle passengers to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Unlike the U.S. Space Shuttle or the existing SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, SpaceX’s latest rocket is designed to carry 100 passengers at a time, much like a small commercial jet does today between two Earth cities. Based on their current timeline, if this orbital test is good, SpaceX would bring astronauts to the Moon as soon as 2025 or 2026.
