Starship – Spaceflight Now

Second Starship test article implodes during pressure test

March 2, 2020

A prototype for SpaceX’s Starship vehicle imploded during a pressurization test at the company’s facility in South Texas Friday night, an event captured on video by local residents.

SpaceX drawing up plans for mobile gantry at launch pad 39A

January 3, 2020

With construction already underway at Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39A on facilities for SpaceX’s next-generation Starship vehicle, another new fixture could soon rise at the seaside launch complex to satisfy U.S. military requirements to vertically integrate sensitive top secret spy satellites with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

SpaceX pausing some Starship work in Florida

December 5, 2019

SpaceX says it is temporarily halting some activity on the company’s next-generation Starship program in Florida, allowing teams to focus on building a new Starship test vehicle in Texas.

SpaceX’s first Starship prototype ruptures during cryogenic test

November 20, 2019

SpaceX’s first partially-assembled Starship vehicle, originally built for atmospheric test flights, ruptured in dramatic fashion Wednesday during a cryogenic loading test at the company’s launch facility in South Texas.

SpaceX offering Starship to NASA for lunar landing missions

November 19, 2019

SpaceX is eligible to propose using its next-generation Starship vehicle to carry NASA robotic science payloads to the lunar surface, the U.S. space agency announced Monday, on missions that could precede future Starship flights with people on-board. SpaceX is one of five companies NASA selected Monday to join a roster of commercial transportation providers to deliver scientific instruments and technology demonstration packages to the moon as soon as 2022.

SpaceX’s next launch to mark another incremental step in rocket reusability

October 11, 2019

SpaceX next launch, slated to carry the company’s second set of Starlink broadband satellites into orbit, will be the first to fly with a reused Falcon 9 booster making its fourth flight when it takes off in the coming weeks.

Photos: SpaceX’s first full-size Starship prototype

September 30, 2019

SpaceX’s first full-size stainless steel Starship test vehicle stands some 164 feet tall and measures wider than the cabin of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. If Elon Musk has his way, it will fly to an altitude of 65,000 feet before the end of the year.

Elon Musk wants to move fast with SpaceX’s Starship

September 29, 2019

Standing in front of a shiny full-scale prototype of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle in South Texas, Elon Musk said Saturday night he wants the company’s gigantic next-generation rocket to fly into orbit within six months, a bold schedule that he acknowledged requires “exponential” improvements in design and manufacturing.

Elon Musk to provide update on SpaceX’s Starship this weekend

September 27, 2019

In the last few months, teams of SpaceX engineers working on the flat coastal plains of South Texas and in a nondescript industrial yard on Florida’s Space Coast have been building two futuristic-looking stainless steel rockets — or Starships — prototypes for a reusable vehicle the company claims could one day ferry people to Mars.

SpaceX launches Starship “hopper” on dramatic test flight

August 27, 2019

SpaceX launched its sub-scale Starship “hopper” spacecraft on a brief unpiloted up-and-down test flight at the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, test facility Tuesday, a dramatic demonstration of rocket technology intended to pave the way to a new, more powerful heavy lift booster and, eventually, crew-carrying interplanetary spacecraft.