SpaceX catches giant Starship booster during historic Flight 5 rocket launch and landing (video)
- by Space.com
- Oct 13, 2024
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Related: Starship and Super Heavy explained
NASA is a believer in the vehicle, selecting it to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration. If all goes to plan, Starship will land NASA astronauts on Earth's nearest neighbor for the first time on the Artemis 3 mission, which is targeted to launch in September 2026.
SpaceX aims to get Starship up and running in time to meet such deadlines via its usual development strategy — tweaking the vehicle and testing those tweaks on test flights, then repeating the process. Indeed, the Flight 5 Starship featured some significant modifications compared to its predecessors.
"One of the key upgrades on Starship ahead of flight was a complete rework of its heat shield, with SpaceX technicians spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer and additional protections between the flap structures," SpaceX wrote in a Flight 5 mission description.
Starship's previous four test flights occurred in April and November of 2023 and March and June of this year.
The rocket has performed better on each successive flight. The debut mission lasted just four minutes, for example; SpaceX ordered a detonation high in the Texas sky after Starship's two stages failed to separate. But Flight 4, which launched on June 6, was a complete success; Ship reached orbital velocity, and both it and Super Heavy survived their return to Earth, landing in their designated splashdown zones. And Starship took another leap today.
The waiting game
The SpaceX Starship lifts off from Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on October 13, 2024, for the Starship Flight 5 test.
(Image credit: Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images)
If it were up to SpaceX, Flight 5 likely would've been in the books two months ago; the company said that Starship was ready to go from a technical standpoint in early August.
Launches require approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), however, and the agency needed more time before greenlighting this one. Indeed, last month, the FAA said that it didn't expect approval for Flight 5 to come before late November.
The FAA explained its reasoning in an emailed statement to Space.com on Sept. 11.
"SpaceX's current license authorizing the Starship Flight 4 launch also allows for multiple flights of the same vehicle configuration and mission profile. SpaceX chose to modify both for its proposed Starship Flight 5 launch, which triggered a more in-depth review," agency officials wrote.
A view of a SpaceX Flight 5 Starship as it reenters Earth's atmosphere, with red glowing plasma around it.
(Image credit: SpaceX)
"In addition, SpaceX submitted new information in mid-August detailing how the environmental impact of Flight 5 will cover a larger area than previously reviewed," they added. "This requires the FAA to consult with other agencies."
SpaceX was not happy with the news. On Sept. 10, the company published a blog post titled "Starships Are Meant to Fly," which claimed that the FAA had previously given SpaceX a mid-September estimate for Flight 5's approval. The document also expressed frustration with the FAA's pace and process and with launch-industry regulations in general.
This SpaceX video still shows several images of the four flaps on SpaceX's Starship Flight 5 spacecraft, with one of them (top left) showing signs of burnthrough during reentry, but not as serious as that seen on Flight 4.
(Image credit: SpaceX)
The Flight 5 "delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis," SpaceX wrote in the post.
"We find ourselves delayed for unreasonable and exasperating reasons," the company added. "Unfortunately, we continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware," the company added. "This should never happen and directly threatens America's position as the leader in space."
At left, a SpaceX Starship wing glowing red as it reenters. On right, a fireball in the night after splashdown.
(Image credit: SpaceX)
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