Starship’s most recent flight on Saturday also ended in an explosion. But industry officials and former FAA officials say NASA has waited seven months to be cleared to retest the vehicle that hopes to return astronauts to the moon’s surface under the Artemis program. There’s reason to believe it can be done without. .
After the flight, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk I wrote to X The rocket, which consists of a superheavy booster and a Starship spacecraft on top, “should be ready for flight within three to four weeks.” The company has a number of vehicles rolling off the production line, including “three ships in final production stages,” he wrote.
Perhaps just as important. A test flight from SpaceX’s facility in south Texas on Saturday showed significant improvements over the first test flight in April. A few months after that flight, SpaceX installed a water suppression system designed to dampen vibrations from the booster’s 33 Raptor engines and protect the pad. It seems to have worked and after the flight on Saturday, Musk wrote: We inspected the Starship launch pad and it is in great condition! There is no need to modify the water-cooled steel plate for the next launch. ”
Flights have also improved considerably. The spacecraft reached space this time, flying to an altitude of 93 miles, much higher than the previous 24 miles. All 33 of her engines in the booster fired. Last time I failed 6 times. They passed the separation point between the booster and spacecraft, which they couldn’t reach last time. Also, the onboard flight termination system, designed to destroy the rocket if it goes off course, appears to have worked in a timely manner. Last time there was a delay of about 40 seconds.
For all these reasons, “the situation is much more promising,” said George Nield, former director of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Office. The question here is, “Did I learn whether something needs to be changed, modified, replaced, or fixed?” He said. “And do any of those things have anything to do with public safety?”
But as the commercial space industry continues to grow, placing demands on the agency that it didn’t have a few years ago, the agency is also stretched thin, which could add to the delays, he said. . And there’s always the chance that the investigation will reveal larger issues, forcing SpaceX and the FAA to spend more time.
Wayne Monteith, who also served as director of the Commercial Space Transportation Agency, agreed that it would likely be a relatively quick review, saying that by the time SpaceX could fly Starship, “we’re not sure what the data shows.” “It could take weeks rather than months,” he said..
Space ‘Of course it’s relatively simple and straightforward,’ Monteith said.
They also need to figure out what caused the booster to explode after it separated and began heading back toward Earth through the atmosphere.
It will be up to SpaceX to submit a report detailing the cause of the flight failure and what changes it plans to make for the next flight.
“Before authorizing a third Starship/Super Heavy launch, SpaceX must obtain an amended license from the FAA that addresses safety, environmental, and other regulatory requirements,” the FAA said in a statement to The Washington Post. There is,” he said. “As part of the authorization process, the FAA will review all new information submitted by SpaceX, including environmental concerns.”
SpaceX has extensive experience working with the FAA and moving quickly to return to the launch pad. After losing its Falcon 9 rocket during NASA’s resupply mission to the International Space Station in 2015, SpaceX flew it six months later and successfully landed the booster for the first time.
During Starship’s previous test campaigns, SpaceX lost a series of prototypes that collapsed, exploded, or crashed before exploding, but they were able to find the problem, fix it, and return to testing. The company now hopes to do something similar with its fully integrated Starship system.
“In tests like this, success comes from what we learn,” SpaceX said in a statement after the latest launch. “And this flight will help SpaceX improve Starship’s reliability as it seeks to make life multiplanetary. A review of the data is underway to explore improvements for the next flight. is.”
It added: “The conclusion of the flight test was made when telemetry was lost near the end of the second stage burn before the engine shut down, after more than eight minutes of flight.” The team verified that safe command destruction was triggered properly based on available vehicle performance data. ”
SpaceX has not disclosed the cause booster explosionor why the second stage self-destruct mechanism was activated.
SpaceX isn’t the only company eager to restart testing. NASA has invested $4 billion in the vehicle and hired SpaceX to use it to shuttle astronauts to and from the moon’s surface in the first landing since the end of the Apollo era in 1972. NASA expects the first Artemis landing with astronauts on board. It will happen by 2025 or 2026, but that timeline will largely depend on Starship. Rockets and spacecraft need to fly many times to prove their reliability. It will also need to refuel in orbit before going to the moon, a difficult feat that has never been accomplished before.
Todd Harrison, a nonresident senior associate at the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he hopes the Biden administration will pay attention to what’s at stake here and encourage the FAA to not drag its feet on the next launch permit. I want it,” he said. think tank. “NASA’s Artemis program relies heavily on Starship development, and the commercial space sector will also greatly benefit from the significantly lower launch costs provided by Starship.”
Still, he said, tensions between SpaceX, an avid commercial company, and the often bureaucratic federal government are likely to escalate further.
“SpaceX tends to expect government approvals to follow a logical and efficient schedule,” Harrison said. “But government bureaucracy is neither logical nor efficient.”