SpaceX’s gargantuan Starship rocket aced its 11th flight test earlier this month in what was the final launch for the second version of the mighty vehicle.
The team is now prepping the launch of the third version of the Starship, which will be more powerful and a little taller, as well as sporting some design changes.
SpaceX has yet to announce a target date for the 12th launch of the Starship, but the consensus appears to be that early 2026 seems most likely.
Next year will be an exciting one for the Starship endeavor as a new launch site will come into operation, paving the way for a higher launch frequency for the most powerful rocket ever built.
Up to now, all 11 Starship launches have taken place from SpaceX’s Starbase site in southern Texas, but soon, additional Starship flights will take place a thousand miles to the east at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
SpaceX is currently building the infrastructure for Starship launches from Kennedy. NASASpaceflight’s Max Evans recently shared an aerial shot (below) showing the launch mount close to completion.
“Starship’s LC-39A launch mount has been making rapid progress at its Roberts Road construction site,” Evans wrote in a social media post accompanying the image. “Based on its current status, we suspect its roll to the pad could happen very soon.”
Sneaky peaky from our latest flight this morning 😉
Starship’s LC-39A launch mount has been making rapid progress at its Roberts Road construction site. Based on its current status, we suspect its roll to the pad could happen very soon.
📸 – @NASASpaceflight pic.twitter.com/qfVf0G2XNy
Construction on a dedicated Starship launch facility at Kennedy started four years ago and is said to be costing SpaceX in the region of $1.8 billion.
With the first-stage Super Heavy and its 33 Raptor engines generating a record-breaking 17 million pounds of thrust at launch, the mount has to be specially designed so that it won’t disintegrate in the face of all the heat and pressure created by the rocket as it leaves the pad.
Of course, there’s lots more besides the mount that has to be ready in time for the first Starship flight from Kennedy, including the launch tower with its famous “chopstick” arms for securing the booster after it returns from space, the flame trench beneath the mount, the water deluge system, nearby roadway improvements, buildings to house the Super Heavy and upper-stage Ship, refurbishment facilities, and lots more besides.
Once ready, SpaceX is aiming to launch Starship from Kennedy around 40 times a year, which is getting on for once a week.
Launching from Florida offers SpaceX a number of advantages, including access to NASA’s infrastructure as well as over-ocean flight paths, which are key for crewed and lunar missions.
Once fully ready, the Starship will be used for crewed and cargo missions to the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program, and could even take part in the first human flights to Mars.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.