SpaceX is continuing with last preparations for the 10th major test flight of the business’s massive Starship rocket after getting launch approval Friday from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Engineers finished a last test of Starship’s propulsion system with a so-called “spin prime” test Wednesday at the launch website in South Texas. Landing crew then rolled the ship back to a close-by garage for engine assessments, touchups to its heat guard, and a handful of other tasks to prepared it for liftoff.

SpaceX has actually revealed the launch is arranged for no earlier than next Sunday, August 24, at 6:30 pm regional time in Texas (23:30 UTC).

Like all previous Starship launches, the substantial 403-foot-tall (123-meter) rocket will remove from SpaceX’s test website in Starbase, Texas, simply north of the US-Mexico border. The rocket includes an effective booster phase called Super Heavy, with 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines. 6 Raptors power the upper phase, understood merely as Starship.

With this flight, SpaceX authorities want to put a number of technical issues with the Starship program behind them. SpaceX is riding a streak of 4 frustrating Starship test flights from January through May, and the surge and damage of another Starship automobile throughout a ground test in June.

These obstacles followed an extremely effective year for the world’s biggest rocket in 2024, when SpaceX flew Starship 4 times and accomplished brand-new goals on each flight. These achievements consisted of the very first catch of a Super Heavy booster back at the launch pad, showing the business’s unique principle for recuperating and recycling the rocket’s very first phase.

Starship’s record up until now in 2025 is another story. The rocket’s failure to make it through a whole suborbital test flight has actually pressed back future program turning points, such as the difficult jobs of recuperating and recycling the rocket’s upper phase, and showing the capability to refuel another rocket in orbit. Those would both be firsts in the history of spaceflight.

These future tests, and more, are now anticipated to take place no faster than next year. This time in 2015, SpaceX authorities intended to attain them in 2025. All of these presentations are important for Elon Musk to fulfill his guarantee of sending out various Starships to develop a settlement on Mars. NASA is excited for SpaceX to reel off these tests as rapidly as possible since the firm has actually chosen Starship as the human-rated lunar lander for the Artemis Moon program. When functional, Starship will likewise be essential to developing out SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink broadband network.

An excellent result on the next Starship test flight would provide SpaceX footing to lastly take an action towards these future demonstrations after months of dithering over style predicaments.

The FAA stated Friday it officially closed the examination into Starship’s newest in-flight failure in May, when the rocket began dripping propellant after reaching area, rendering it not able to finish the test flight.

“The FAA oversaw and accepted the findings of the SpaceX-led investigation,” the federal regulator stated in a declaration. “The final mishap report cites the probable root cause for the loss of the Starship vehicle as a failure of a fuel component. SpaceX identified corrective actions to prevent a reoccurrence of the event.”

Detecting failures

SpaceX recognized the most likely cause for the May failure as a malfunctioning primary fuel tank pressurization system diffuser situated on the forward dome of Starship’s main methane tank. The diffuser stopped working a couple of minutes after launch, when sensing units identified a pressure drop in the primary methane tank and a pressure boost in the ship’s nose cone simply above the tank.

The rocket made up for the drop in primary tank pressure and finished its engine burn, however venting from the nose cone and an aggravating fuel leakage overwhelmed Starship’s mindset control system. Identifying a significant issue, Starship set off automated onboard commands to vent all staying propellant into area and “passivate” itself before an unguided reentry over the Indian Ocean, too soon ending the test flight.

Engineers recreated the diffuser failure on the ground throughout the examination, and after that revamped the part to much better direct pressurized gas into the primary fuel tank. This will likewise “substantially decrease” stress on the diffuser structure, SpaceX stated.

The FAA, charged with guaranteeing business rocket launches do not threaten public security, approved the examination and okayed for SpaceX to fly Starship once again when it is all set.

“SpaceX can now proceed with Starship Flight 10 launch operations under its current license,” the FAA stated.

“The upcoming flight will continue to expand the operating envelope on the Super Heavy booster, with multiple landing burn tests planned,” SpaceX stated in an upgrade published to its site Friday. “It will also target similar objectives as previous missions, including Starship’s first payload deployment and multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the upper stage to the launch site for catch.”

In the after-effects of the test flight in May, SpaceX wanted to fly Starship once again by late June or early July. Another mishap June 18, this time on the ground, postponed the program another couple of months. The Starship lorry SpaceX appointed to the next flight, designated Ship 36, blew up on a test stand in Texas as groups filled it with cryogenic propellants for an engine test-firing.

The mishap damaged the ship and harmed the test website, triggering SpaceX to retrofit the sole active Starship launch pad to support screening of the next ship in line– Ship 37. Those tests consisted of a short shooting of all 6 of the ship’s Raptor engines August 1.

After Ship 37’s last spin prime test Wednesday, employees carried the rocket back to a garage for assessment, and teams right away got to work transitioning the launch pad back to its regular setup to host a complete Super Heavy/Starship stack.

SpaceX stated the surge on the test stand in June was most likely brought on by damage to a high-pressure nitrogen tank inside Starship’s payload bay area. This tank, called a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, or COPV, strongly burst and resulted in the ship’s intense death. SpaceX stated COPVs on upcoming flights will run at lower pressures, and supervisors purchased extra examinations on COPVs to search for damage, more evidence screening, more strict approval requirements, and a hardware modification to deal with the issue.

That was followed in March by another Starship launch that had a comparable outcome, once again spreading particles near the Bahamas. In May, the ninth Starship test flight made it further downrange and finished its engine burn before drawing out of control in area, avoiding it from making a directed reentry to collect information on its heat guard.

Mastering the style of Starship’s heat guard is crucial the future of the program. As it has on all of this year’s test flights, SpaceX has actually set up on the next Starship numerous various ceramic and metal tile styles to evaluate alternative products to safeguard the lorry throughout its scorching plunge back into Earth’s environment. Starship effectively made it through reentry for a regulated splashdown in the sea numerous times in 2015, however sensing units spotted locations on the rocket’s stainless-steel skin after a few of the tiles fell off throughout launch and descent.

Making the Starship upper phase multiple-use like the Super Heavy booster will need much better efficiency from the heat guard. The needs of flying the ship home from orbit and trying a catch at the launch pad far surpass the obstacle of recuperating a booster. Returning from area, the ship encounters much greater temperature levels than the booster sees at lower speeds.

SpaceX’s most essential objective for the 10th Starship flight will be collecting info about how well the ship’s various heat guard products hold up throughout reentry. Engineers wish to have this information as quickly as possible to notify style choices about the next model of Starship– Version 3 or Block 3– that will in fact fly into orbit. Far, all Starship launches have actually purposefully targeted a speed simply shy of orbital speed, bringing the car back through the environment midway around the world.

Other goals on the docket for Starship Flight 10 consist of the release of spacecraft simulators imitating the size of SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink Internet satellites. Like the heat guard information, this has actually become part of the flight prepare for the last 3 Starship launches, however the rocket never ever made it far enough to try any payload implementation tests.

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