Launching a 400-foot (122-meter) rocket won’t seem like anything new for a very long time.
SpaceX’s giant Starship vehicle took off for the third time today (March 14) for an ambitious test flight that has energized space fans worldwide.
Starship didn’t achieve all of its goals today; For example, both the first stage booster, known as the Super Heavy, and the upper stage spacecraft were lost upon their return to Earth. But the megarocket flew faster, farther and longer than before, giving morale to the company and NASA, which will use Starship to land astronauts on the moon with the Artemis program.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson said, “Congratulations to @SpaceX on a successful test flight! Starship has taken to the skies. Together, we’re making great strides aboard Artemis to return humanity to the moon — then we’ll look to Mars.” said today via X.
Relating to: SpaceX launched its giant Starship rocket into space with its epic 3rd test flight (video)
Read more: Relive SpaceX Starship’s 3rd flight test with breathtaking photos
Starship’s first crewed lunar landing for NASA is scheduled to occur in September 2026 as part of the agency’s Artemis 3 mission. It will take a lot of work to get Starship up and running in time to meet that deadline, and SpaceX is rolling up its sleeves.
The company has already built four more Starships at its Starbase facility in South Texas, which hosted today’s launch.
“These vehicles are planned for future flight testing, just like today,” Siva Bharadvaj, a space operations engineer at SpaceX, said during a webcast about today’s launch.
“And in fact, just this week, we had static firing on our next ship, which is planning to fly and expect to test the thruster as soon as the launch bay clears today’s flight test,” he added.
SpaceX will aim to get this and future vehicles airborne as quickly as possible, in keeping with the company’s “build, fly and iterate” philosophy. Indeed, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said this week that the company hopes to launch into space. At least six Starship missions in 2024.
Musk is known for aggressive timelines, but this could very well be achievable. Seven months passed between the first Starship test flight in April 2023 and the second, which took place last November. The difference between the second flight and today’s launch was only four months, so things are moving in the right direction.
Considering the milestones recorded in today’s mission, the turnaround time for the fourth flight will be even shorter. For example, Super Heavy performed a successful “recoil burn” after separating from the upper stage, putting itself in position for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico (though it failed to achieve a landing burn).
And the upper stage reached orbital speed, opened its payload door in space as it would on operational, satellite-deployed flights, and survived reentry into Earth’s atmosphere for a time. The ship managed to send home incredible video of its ordeal before dark, about 50 minutes after dark. (Starship’s first and second flights lasted only four minutes and eight minutes, respectively.)
Relating to: See amazing photos and video of Starship’s 2nd launch
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And Starship’s flight cadence will likely increase greatly once it becomes operational. For example, before each moon landing mission, Starship will need to fill its tanks at a fuel depot in Earth orbit.
It will take more than one Starship “tanker” mission to fill this tank. How many there are is a matter of debate, partly due to uncertainty about how much of the supercold propellant will “boil off.” While Musk pegged the number of tanker flights per Starship moon landing at four to eight, NASA officials said it could be in the “high teens.” Whatever the final number is, that means a lot of launches for Starship.
SpaceX also plans to use Starship to help humanity settle Mars, which Musk has repeatedly emphasized (including after today’s flight). Building a sustainable city on the Red Planet would require a surprising number of launches, even though Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built. (During today’s webcast, Bharadvaj said that Starship, in its final form, will be capable of carrying up to 275 tons of payload into Earth orbit.)
To give you an idea: A few years ago, Musk laid out a plan that involved launching fleets of 1,000 Starships to the Red Planet every 26 months, the recurring window when Earth and Mars are properly aligned for interplanetary missions.
This can be overly ambitious or point to a distant future if it is achievable. But it’s safe to assume that we’ll have more chances to watch the fledgling Starship fly in the coming months.