SpaceX Seeks to Push Past Starship’s Fiery Troubles
Elon Musk’s aerospace company plans next test launch of its roughly 400-foot-tall rocket after last three flights ended prematurely
SpaceX is aiming to reignite its 403-foot-tall Starship project.
The rocket—core to founder Elon Musk’s dream of landing humans on Mars—has struggled through a rough stretch, with its spacecraft beset by leaks, propellants mixing together and fires during three other test missions this year.
On Sunday, SpaceX is set to launch Starship on a test flight around 7:30 p.m. Eastern time from its complex outside of Brownsville, Texas. Weekend thunderstorms that are expected in the region could prompt SpaceX to delay the flight.
The spacecraft’s failures have set back SpaceX’s ambitions to use Starship to accelerate its Starlink satellite business. They pose challenges for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other customers planning missions with the vehicle.
“It’s time to be successful. The company needs it. The program needs it. NASA needs it,” said Hans Koenigsmann, a former high-ranking SpaceX engineer who spent around 20 years at the company. He defined success in part as the company returning the Starship spacecraft to Earth.
Similar to past launches, SpaceX plans a series of experiments during the launch, aiming to fly the Starship spacecraft through space before attempting to speed it through the atmosphere for a landing in the Indian Ocean.
The fiery endings to Starship’s recent test flights have hindered SpaceX engineers from gathering data on the rocket, a towering booster designed to propel a spacecraft into orbit.
Musk said before the previous Starship launch in May that evaluating a tiled heat shield on the spacecraft was the mission’s priority, but the vehicle tumbled out of its flight path before the shield could be tested.
For Sunday’s flight, the company aims to deploy simulated Starlink satellites and try out alternative materials designed to protect the spacecraft during re-entry, among other tests. It has removed a significant number of tiles from the spacecraft to see how several parts of the vehicle perform when it is flying back to Earth.
Shana Diez, a top engineer working on the Starship program for SpaceX, on Saturday said the craft will face a tough challenge during re-entry. “Many hard lessons rolled into this ship,” she said in a post on X.
SpaceX won’t try to catch the booster at the launchpad, an engineering feat it has completed three times. Instead, it plans to conduct a flip maneuver with the booster that requires less propellant. One booster engine used for the last part of landing will be intentionally disabled, allowing the company to gather data on using a backup engine during the landing sequence.
SpaceX has faced other problems with the vehicle. In June, a Starship spacecraft exploded during an engine test on the ground. That caused delays while SpaceX investigated what happened and hampered the company’s ability to launch more frequently this year.
No one was hurt or killed in the accident, which scorched a testing area at the company’s facility in Texas, shook homes miles away and sparked tension with Mexican authorities. Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said the explosion caused contamination in the neighboring country.
Starbase, the company property and city where SpaceX builds and launches Starship, is located near the southeastern tip of Texas, next to the U.S. border with Mexico. The company has said it offered assistance in cleaning up debris.