SpaceX is planning one of its most ambitious launches on Monday, as the massive Starship could embark on a flight into Earth’s orbit for the first time. The mission could have broad implications for future space exploration.
Starship 14 is expected to launch as early as Monday, Sept. 28, at 7:15 a.m. The rocket and spacecraft are stacked at Starbase in South Texas near Brownsville. The opportunity to launch on Monday will last until roughly 8:30, after which the launch will be delayed.
On Thursday, SpaceX, which recently launched the largest IPO in history bolstering its founder Elon Musk to become the first trillionaire, completed a rehearsal of the launch. Monday’s launch is pending regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The flight will be streamed both on SpaceX’s X account and its website.
Starship 14’s flight
Starship is SpaceX’s fully reusable super heavy-lift space vehicle, the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built. This fourteenth mission will be the first to fully deploy operational Starlink satellites into space, after the previous July mission demonstrated the ability to do so.
Starship 14 is expected to fly at an altitude of roughly 170 miles above the Earth and complete six orbits around the planet over the course of 10 hours.
The vehicle consists of two major pieces, or stages: the upper stage and the booster. Two and a half minutes after launch, the upper stage of Starship 14 will separate from its super heavy booster, which is expected to land in the Gulf. SpaceX said it has addressed issues the booster faced during the July flight, which resulted in a hard landing in the water.
The upper stage spacecraft will then fire its engines to fly into Earth’s orbit, just under 30 minutes into the flight. Once in orbit minutes later, Starship will then deploy 26 Starlink satellites and fly around the Earth six times. About nine hours into the flight, Starship will begin making its return to Earth before landing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile.
Artemis III and beyond
Both of Starship 14’s stages are designed to be fully reusable. A successful mission that takes the powerful rocket into Earth’s orbit and back down to Earth would bode well for SpaceX and the commercial space exploration industry writ large.
It will also benefit NASA and its upcoming Artemis missions. NASA has contracted SpaceX to develop a lunar landing system to bring astronauts to the moon’s surface for the first time in more than 50 years. NASA is spending more than $4 billion for SpaceX’s lander, according to areport from the agency’s Office of Inspector General, despite SpaceX facing repeated delays.
SpaceX intends to use a variation of Starship, designed to carry a crew, to land on the moon and develop the U.S.’s Moon Base.
NASA had initially planned to land humans on the moon with the Artemis III mission. Following delays from both SpaceX and the other commercial program contracted with NASA, Blue Origin, the Artemis III mission was rekindled to involve testing one or both SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar landers in low Earth orbit.
Artemis IV is expected to utilize one of those landers, depending on which one is most capable in time for the mission, expected in early 2028.
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