Rocket Report: Starship V3 test-fired; ESA’s tentative step toward crew launch
More exchanges to come?… The Vulcan rocket is several months away from returning to flight for the U.S. military. An industry source told Ars that the Space Force would not be able to fly another mission to Vulcan before the end of the year. Space Systems Command has moved four launches of new GPS navigation satellites from ULA to SpaceX over the past two years as Vulcan encountered delays. Col. Eric Zarybnisky, head of Space Systems Command’s space access office, said the military is “working on a significant number” of potential swaps of additional Vulcan rockets to another launcher, likely the Falcon 9 or SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.
ESA’s first Mars rover finally takes a spin. NASA confirmed Thursday that SpaceX will launch the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover, possibly as early as late 2028, on a Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, Ars reports. So why does NASA decide which rocket will launch a flagship European mission to Mars? It’s a long story involving the search for extraterrestrial life, crippling political axes, and, most importantly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ars explores the mission’s tortured history, nearly a quarter century of broken promises, technical setbacks and geopolitical drama.
Aim for Mars… The announcement is also notable because it is the first time SpaceX has won a launch contract for a mission to Mars. The Red Planet is the apple of Elon Musk’s eye, with utopian concepts of settling on Mars to accompany SpaceX’s more tangible work on a massive rocket to fly there. This new rocket, called Starship, is still far from reaching Mars. Therefore, it is likely that SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, not to be outdone, will carry out the company’s first mission to Mars on behalf of NASA and the European Space Agency.
Next generation Starship tested at Starbase. The new, improved version of SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket cleared a major hurdle this week on the way to its first launch, Space.com reports. This liftoff, scheduled for early or mid-May, will be the 12th overall for Starship, but the first for the “version 3” of the vehicle, which is larger and more powerful than its predecessors. The first Starship V3 vehicle fired its six Raptor engines Tuesday while docked at a test stand in South Texas. The static fire test follows a series of cryogenic tests earlier this year.
