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SpaceX’s Starship rocket successfully lifted off from Texas last week for its 11th test flight – but industry experts say it has a ways to go before it is ready for ambitious space exploration projects.
During the test, the spaceship’s booster fired all 33 of its engines to get the Starship into the air, and as it lifted off, it fired another six engines to breach the Earth’s atmosphere, the Elon Musk-owned company said. When it got into the air, it released eight mock SpaceX satellites and restarted one of its engines in space.
SpaceX’s Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, will likely be launched for the United States’ Artemis III mission in 2027 that will see humans return to the surface of the Moon for the first time since the 1960s. The goal is to eventually use the Starship both for Moon and eventual Mars missions in the 2030s.
So what’s next for SpaceX and any future Mars missions after the successful launch? Space industry experts said there’s still many technical milestones that SpaceX needs to hit before getting humans up on the Moon.
‘Time is basically running out’
Starship is being developed for three very different, concurrent missions: the deployment of Starlink satellites, the Artemis III missions to the Moon, and eventual long-distance exploration missions to Mars.
There are still many hurdles that Starship needs to overcome before it is ready to bring people to the Moon, according to Lars Petzold, a research fellow at the European Science Policy Institute (ESPI) think tank.
“There’s a lot of things that SpaceX still needs to prove and they are, of course, very cautious because the time is basically running out for them,” Petzold said.
Petzold estimated that SpaceX is using launches like this 11th one to build on its capacities “incrementally,” meaning the company may next try to demonstrate whether the craft is able to get into orbit.
“For now all of the Starship launchers have been suborbital, so they haven’t completed a full Earth orbit,” he said.
Pierre Lionnet, managing director of the professional space industry association ASD-Eurospace, said the fact that Starship has stayed suborbital so far means it hasn’t been able to deploy a satellite into orbit, which would be one of its operational strong points.
“I expected to see it on the second or third launch,” he said. “Usually when you test a launcher you test it … to put satellites in orbit. Nobody cares about anything else a launcher does”.
After reaching orbit, SpaceX would have to demonstrate that it can transfer propellant to refuel the Starship between two different vessels, which Petzold called a “crucial” part of the process for Moon or Mars missions.
That’s because the ship will need more fuel mid-mission to make the long flight, Petzold said.
Moving liquid gas between two bodies in space “is a major feat that has never been done before,” Lionnet said.
“Here we are talking about moving literally hundreds of tonnes of those fluids from one starship to the other in order to fill it up,” he said, noting that the lack of gravity will make it challenging to transfer liquid from one vessel to another.
“Everybody is convinced that this is a very complex thing to achieve,” he added.
Another 10 or 20 tests needed for 2027 Artemis III, experts say
Whether Starship will be able to reach the 2027 deadline for the Artemis III missions depends on how the next tests go, Petzold said.
He estimated that there would have to be at least another 10 or 20 tests before humans would be able to step on board, as long as there are no investigations after any failed attempts.
More missions will have to show that the Starship can reach lunar orbit, that it can dock with the existing infrastructure on the Moon, and that it can land successfully with humans aboard, Petzold said.
Lionnet said there are also many “configurations” about the Artemis III missions that need to be tested.
“The launch system to go to the Moon, what would it look like? Will it carry solar panels? Will it have landing legs … will it have living compartments, how will the door open, does it have a crane to bring astronauts to the Moon’s surface?” Lionnet said. “All these things, they do not exist”.
Another element that needs to be tested is the reusability of the craft, which SpaceX has touted as one of the Starship’s main features, Lionnet said.
While the company has been able to demonstrate that it can get its booster, the Falcon 9, through servicing and up for another launch in eight or nine days’ time, Lionnet said the upper portion of the rocket faces a harsher environment coming back to Earth that will require more time to service.
“If you look at the videos of those Starships coming back to Earth, they are covered in flames … it seems really burned and scarred looking at it,” he said. “It’s very difficult to believe that the same item could be put back to launch immediately”.
Engineering feats to come with new Starship model
Some of the engineering displays are set to come with a new Version 3 model of the Starship, SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said during the webcast of the 11th flight.
The new craft will have “really significant changes … under the hood,” Huot said, so that the company can start mass producing them and using them for satellite launches.
Among the changes are some propulsion and energy modifications to the top of the craft that Huot said will help it survive longer missions away from Earth.
A new fuel transfer tube for Starship will have “a rocket inside of a rocket” that will give SpaceX a faster way to start all 33 of its engines at the same time.
The Version 3 crafts will also docking adapters to bring two Starship capsules together for “propellant transfer,” Huot said.
For Petzold, Version 3 of the craft is moving towards “operational use” of the Starship, potentially allowing it to send up the Starlink satellites into orbit, but not close to the Moon or Mars missions that are widely anticipated..
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