Starship could launch as soon as Sunday.
Lunar Lodestar
SpaceX is readying up for the next test flight of its Starship rocket — and NASA is officially pretty hyped about it, SpaceNews reports.
The rocket’s last test flight — the fourth — was in June, which saw the massive spacecraft and its Super Heavy booster survive re-entry largely intact and eventually splash down in the ocean.
Now, after a long wait, the fifth flight could launch as soon as October 13, according to SpaceX, if it gets the go-ahead from the Federal Aviation Administration.
NASA, for its part, is “really looking forward” to the Starship flight, as Lori Glaze, the agency’s acting deputy associate administrator at its Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, told reporters during a Wednesday meeting, as quoted by SpaceNews.
The world’s most powerful rocket is planned to play a key role in NASA’s lunar ambitions, with a specialized variant of it, dubbed the Human Landing System, serving as a lander that will carry astronauts down to the Moon’s surface during the third mission of space agency’s Artemis program.
“There’s no doubt that the Human Landing System is the critical path for Artemis 3,” Glaze said at the meeting.
Explosive and Steady
Starship has had a rocky development. Its first two orbital flight tests ended in explosions. But the latest one in June marked a significant improvement, bringing it one small step closer to being mission-ready.
In addition to both stages making it to space and back, the spacecraft’s Super Heavy booster successfully slowed itself to a static hover by firing three of its Raptor engines, allowing it to softly splash down in the Gulf of Mexico.
Starship, however, had it a bit rougher, looking worse for wear before managing a soft splashdown in the ocean.
Armed and Ready
With its fifth integrated test flight, SpaceX will be attempting an altogether more ambitious landing.
While the upper stage is still set to land in the Gulf, the Super Heavy booster will attempt a return on solid ground at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. But instead of lowering itself to the surface, a launch tower — nicknamed “Mechazilla” — will try to catch the booster mid-air with a pair of huge, “chopstick” arms (as seen in this animation).
SpaceX’s plans of Starship eventually being a reusable launch vehicle hinge on successfully executing this landing. It’s a difficult and complex maneuver to perform, and there’s a chance that SpaceX could call it off if the conditions aren’t right. But Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president for build and flight reliability, thinks the big rocket can do it.
“We landed with half a centimeter accuracy in the ocean, so we think we have a reasonable chance to go back to the tower,” Gerstenmaier said at a separate Wednesday meeting, per SpaceNews.
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