As of: March 27, 2024, 7:06 p.m
By: Tanja Banner
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The time until the next launch of the giant “Starship” shouldn’t be too long this time, indicates SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell.
Boca Chica – The “Starship”, SpaceX’s new giant rocket, took off for the third time in mid-March.
The test was relatively successful, even though neither the first nor the second rocket stage made it to splashdown in the ocean.
While it took many months after the first two tests before the rocket was allowed to take off again, this time it should happen relatively quickly.
And that's not what Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, says, who always gives far too optimistic dates.
This time, the period until the next “Starship” launch was announced by Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX.
Shotwell's assessments are considered much more realistic than Musk's.
At the "Satellite 2024" conference in Washington DC on Tuesday (March 19), the SpaceX president said, according to
Space.com
: "We're finding out what happened to both rocket stages and hope to fly again in about six weeks." would be a period “early May,” she added.
SpaceX is planning nine “Starship” launches for 2024.
SpaceX’s “Starship” takes off for its third test flight.
© IMAGO/JOE MARINO
SpaceX President Shotwell: “Starship” should fly again soon
However, it's not just SpaceX that has to be ready for the next launch of the world's largest rocket.
The company also needs a license from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is re-investigating after the last test flight.
During the third test flight, the first rocket stage, the so-called “Super Heavy” booster, broke apart about 500 meters above the Gulf of Mexico.
The plan was actually for him to fire the engines again to land and then splash down in the ocean.
The second rocket stage, a spacecraft called “Starship,” reached orbital speed on its third flight and could still be seen entering the Earth’s atmosphere in the live stream.
However, what followed was a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, abbreviation RUD, as SpaceX itself calls it.
What this means is a “rapid unscheduled dismantling” – for example an explosion, as in the previous test flights.
The “Starship” only ended its flight around 50 minutes after takeoff - on the first two test flights it only took four and eight minutes until the explosion.
SpaceX and Elon Musk have a lot planned with the giant rocket “Starship”.
SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk have big plans for the “Starship”.
Flights to the moon are planned for the US space organization NASA, but also flights to Mars; Musk has even publicly flirted with interstellar flights.
Colonizing the red planet is Musk's real goal, which is why he founded SpaceX and began experimenting with reusable rockets.
The “Starship” should also be reusable in the future.
The plan is for both the rocket booster and the “Starship” to be reusable.
But SpaceX isn't that far yet.
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In any case, the fourth test flight is not expected to make any big leaps: “I don’t think we will be releasing satellites on the next flight,”
Space.com
quotes Shotwell.
“I think we're really going to focus on getting reentry right and making sure we can land these things where we want to land them, and successfully.”
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