SpaceX has called off the first launch of its Starship spacecraft, designed to carry crew and cargo to the Moon and Mars. The company said its teams will work to take advantage of the next available opportunity but will have to wait at least 48 hours.
The operation, which was to be carried out from the Starbase launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, was scheduled for today. However, it had to be cancelled due to a problem with a pressurisation valve. At nearly 120 metres long and capable of carrying more than a hundred tonnes of cargo, it is the largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built.
SpaceX, Starship and the return to the Moon
NASA selected the Starship capsule for its Artemis programme, scheduled to begin next year with the goal of returning astronauts to the Moon in 2025. It is a long-term sequential project to establish a stable human presence on our only natural satellite and develop bases from which to send missions to Mars starting in the next decade.
Last Friday, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted Elon Musk’s aerospace company the necessary licence to launch the rocket into Earth orbit for the first time, kicking off a new phase of its test flights, crucial to SpaceX’s goals.
The Starship spacecraft
Starship consists of a large 70-metre-long first-phase launch rocket called «Super Heavy» and a 50-metre-long section containing cargo storage space and the crew capsule.
While the programme has already passed multiple suborbital flight tests, Starship has so far never reached Earth orbit powered by its full propellant and capsule configuration. The launch will therefore be an important step towards manned missions to lunar orbit starting next year.
Once launched, the booster would separate from the rest of the equipment and head towards the Gulf of Mexico, while the capsule would continue its journey into orbit. It would then re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and land vertically on a platform over the Pacific Ocean, located about a hundred kilometres off the northwest coast of Kauai in the Hawaiian archipelago, ninety minutes after launch. Both are fully reusable.
SpaceX accelerated testing of its Starship spacecraft from 2020, although the programme suffered delays. Some of the first launches ended in explosions and complete loss of the prototypes. However, the company had built them with the intention of making them virtually disposable.
Since then, each test has been used to improve the design and gain regulatory approval. Now all that remains is to wait for the historic first launch, which will be a milestone in this new phase of public-private collaboration in space exploration.
