SpaceX faces high stakes for upcoming Starship rocket test flight

SpaceX plans to launch an updated version of its Starship megarocket — a new prototype of the system that NASA hopes will carry its astronauts to the Moon in two years — on a critical test flight Tuesday.

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The stakes for Starship, and by extension Elon Musk’s rocket company, may have never been higher. SpaceX is developing Starship as part of NASA’s Artemis program and is racing against its rival, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, to build a lunar lander that NASA can use in 2028, when it aims to send astronauts to the Moon. Late next year, NASA intends to test one or both of these new vehicles in low Earth orbit as part of the Artemis III mission.

At the same time, SpaceX is preparing to go public. Its highly anticipated IPO, expected next month, could be the biggest ever. Reuters reported Friday that the company intended to make its prospectus public as early as Wednesday – the day after the Starship test flight – ahead of a market debut, possibly by mid-June.

All this comes after Starship suffered a series of setbacks during test flights last year, including an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere and two mid-flight explosions as the upper stage vehicles accelerated through space.

Starship’s most recent test flight, the 11th overall, took place seven months ago. Since then, the booster, called Super Heavy, and the upper stage, simply called Ship, have undergone significant redesigns. The upcoming launch will be the first test flight of SpaceX’s new third-generation spacecraft, dubbed V3. It’s now bigger, more powerful and is about to be fully reusable. The Starship V3 stands 408 feet tall when fully stacked, a few feet taller than its predecessor.

It is scheduled to lift off from a new launch pad located at SpaceX’s Starbase facility at the southern tip of Texas during a launch window that opens at 6:30 p.m. ET.

The flight plan will not differ much from previous Starship sorties, according to SpaceX. During the suborbital test flight, Starship will attempt to deploy 22 fake Starlink satellites. SpaceX also intends for the upper stage to reignite one of its six Raptor engines during its time in space, a key demonstration of the technology needed for deorbit when the spacecraft one day returns to Earth from space.

Tuesday’s flight is expected to last approximately 65 minutes. As has been the case in previous tests, the upper stage is expected to crash into the Indian Ocean if all goes according to plan. SpaceX plans to eventually make the craft reusable and “capture” the spacecraft with mechanical arms on the launch tower at the company’s Starbase facility in South Texas.

SpaceX demonstrated similar capture maneuvers with Starship’s Super Heavy booster during previous test flights. On Tuesday, however, the booster is expected to land at an offshore site in the Gulf of Mexico and do not attempt to return to the launch site to catch a catch, according to SpaceX.

Starship development is behind where NASA hoped SpaceX would be by now. The rocket made its first flight in 2023, but failures last year have slowed its progress. NASA had originally planned to land astronauts on the lunar surface during the Artemis III mission, but scrapped that plan earlier this year to allow more testing in low Earth orbit and give SpaceX and Blue Origin more time to develop their lunar landers.

Then, during testimony last month before a House subcommittee, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told lawmakers that Artemis III would launch in late 2027, rather than mid-2027 as he had said in February.

SpaceX faces a series of tight deadlines. The company is working to prepare Starship for next year’s revamped Artemis III mission, which calls for Starship’s upper stage to meet NASA’s Orion capsule — the same vehicle that carried the Artemis II astronauts around the moon last month — in orbit around Earth. After that, SpaceX will have a quick turnaround to obtain Starship certification to transport astronauts to the Moon the following year.

The plan for the 2028 mission, Artemis IV, is for the Starship’s upper stage to dock with Orion in orbit around the Moon, then transport the NASA crew to the lunar surface. To conclude the mission, the ship would blast off from the moon with the astronauts and dock again with Orion, which would then return the crew home to Earth.

SpaceX’s many improvements to Starship for V3 include new Raptor 3 engines on Super Heavy and Ship. Together, they will be capable of generating approximately 18 million pounds of thrust.

SpaceX also increased the volume of the Starship’s propellant tank and reduced the number of “grid fins” on the booster — features located at the top to help guide it toward Earth with precision.

“Together, these new elements are designed to enable a step change in spacecraft capabilities and aim to unlock critical vehicle functions, including complete and rapid reuse, transfer of propellant into space, deployment of Starlink satellites and orbital data centers, and the ability to send people and cargo to the Moon and Mars,” SpaceX said on its website.

The ability to perform propellant transfers in space will be particularly important because the ship’s upper stage must be refueled in space in order to fly to the Moon. SpaceX has yet to attempt such a maneuver, but a successful test flight Tuesday could set the stage for these key next steps.