Starship

Oct. 13 (UPI) — SpaceX is planning the 11th flight test on Monday of its Starship, its two-stage, heavy-lift launch vehicle designed to one day take humans back to the moon and eventually to Mars.

The launch window will open at 6:15 p.m. CT at the company’s Starbase compound in Texas near the Gulf of Mexico and about 20 miles from Brownsville.

A live-streamed broadcast of the test flight will begin about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.

In August, the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX succeeded in its third attempt to launch the 10th Starship test mission after SpaceX officials scrubbed two prior launches.

Monday’s flight is expected to build on the “successful demonstrations” from its 10th test in August, according to officials, but with flight experiments “gathering data for the next generation Super Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship’s heatshield, and demonstrating maneuvers that will mimic the upper stage’s final approach for a future return to launch site.”

But on Monday, the company reiterated that the flight schedule was a “dynamic” process and “likely to change” as is the case with all other developmental testing.

Rocket company postpones 10th test-flight to troubleshoot issue at Texas launch site.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has called off a planned test flight of its Starship megarocket following an issue at the launch site.

About 30 minutes before the planned liftoff at its Texas launch facility on Sunday, SpaceX said that it was abandoning its 10th test flight to “allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems”.

SpaceX said it would attempt the launch again on Monday.

The launch failure is the latest in a series of botched missions by SpaceX.

Test flights of the rocket’s upper stage in January, March and May ended in mid-flight explosions, while a “static fire” test in June resulted in the vehicle exploding on the launchpad.

Starship is designed to eventually be fully reusable, but SpaceX has so far been unable to get the vehicle’s upper stage to deliver a payload to space or return to the launch site.

The 403-feet (123-metre) spacecraft is key to Musk’s goal of colonising Mars, while NASA plans to use a customised version of the vehicle for its planned crewed missions to the Moon.

If SpaceX’s latest launch went ahead as planned, the Starship upper stage would have separated from the Super Heavy booster dozens of miles in altitude.

Super Heavy, which has returned for a landing at its launchpad in giant mechanical arms in past tests, would have targeted the Gulf of Mexico for a soft water landing to test a backup engine configuration.

Starship was to briefly ignite its own engines to blast further into space, where it would have attempted to release its first batch of mock Starlink satellites and reignite an engine while on a suborbital path around the planet.

If Starship’s 10th test flight eventually succeeds, SpaceX will still face formidable technical hurdles, from making the system fully and rapidly reusable at low cost to proving it can refuel super-cooled propellant in orbit.

June 27 (UPI) — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said the nation is launching an investigation into the impacts of debris from debris that landed in the country after SpaceX rocket exploded in Texas.

Sheinbaum said in a press conference Wednesday that there “is indeed contamination” and Mexico is launching a general review of the impact of the debris.

SpaceX is denying that debris from the explosion of one of its rockets has damaged the environment in Mexico.

“We are reviewing everything related to the launching of rockets that are very close to our border,” Sheinbaum said, adding that Mexico would “file any necessary claims” if it found SpaceX violated international laws.

The SpaceX Starship exploded on June 19 during a preflight procedure for its 10th test flight from Starbase, Texas, with previous flights also exploding in the air after launch and scattering material in the surrounding areas.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at the time called the incident “just a scratch,” as no one was injured, although Mexico alleges the explosion sent debris along the shoreline of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

The company, however, denied the claims in a post on X on Thursday.

“As previously stated, there are no hazards to the surrounding area,” SpaceX said. “Previous independent tests conducted on materials inside Starship, including toxicity analyses, confirm they pose no chemical, biological, or toxicological risks.”

Environmental activists have alleged that debris from the incident has caused a die-off of marine life, such as dolphins, sea turtles and fish, while residents of the city of Matamoros have ostensibly found canisters and metal pieces on the beaches there as well.

The nonprofit environmental organization Conibio Global A.C. posted to its social media platform Monday that Sheinbaum responded to their complaint in regard to SpaceX debris and sent a crew of technicians, scientists and biologists among other specialists to investigate hunks of metal, rubber and plastic, as well as combustion tanks that purportedly fell from the Starship explosion into an area that includes the Río Bravo River.

“Within the inspections they took samples of water from the river and the beach, soil, sand, burnt plants, among others,” the post said, and also showed photos that allegedly show pieces of Starship wreckage and damage to trees.

Another post from last week purportedly shows a large piece of Starship that fell into an area of communal farmland known as La Burrita.

The group also posted video from Bagdad Beach in Matamoros that allegedly shows Starship pieces, one of which is clearly labeled “SpaceX.”

In the Thursday X post from SpaceX, the company says it has made attempts to recover debris from the explosion, and that it has “requested local and federal assistance from the government of Mexico in the recovery of anomaly related debris, offered resources and assistance in the clean-up, and have sought validation of SpaceX’s right to conduct recovery operations.”

“SpaceX looks forward to working with the Mexican government and local authorities for the return of the debris as soon as possible,” the post concluded.

The billionaire’s Mars mission claim comes despite SpaceX experiencing several failed test launches over recent months.

Elon Musk has said that he believes there is a 50 percent chance that his Mars spacecraft will make its first uncrewed voyage to the red planet at the end of 2026, just two days after the latest test-flight setback for his SpaceX firm.

Musk presented a detailed Starship development timeline in a video posted online by his Los Angeles area-based rocket company on Thursday.

The South African-born billionaire and SpaceX owner said his latest timeline for reaching Mars depended on whether the craft can complete several challenging technical feats during testing, specifically a post-launch refuelling manoeuvre in Earth’s orbit.

In a video on social media platform X, which he also owns, Musk said his Starbase industrial complex and rocket launch facility in Texas was the “gateway to Mars”.

“It is where we are going to develop the technology necessary to take humanity and civilisation and life as we know it to another planet for the first time in the four and a half billion year history of Earth,” he said.

The end of 2026 is when a slim window opens offering the closest trip between Earth and Mars, as the planets align around the sun once every two years. This shorter distance would take seven to nine months to transit by spacecraft.

The first flight to Mars would carry a simulated crew consisting of Tesla-built humanoid Optimus robots. Human crews would then follow in the second or third landings.

In the video, Musk said he believed there was a 50-50 chance SpaceX would meet the 2026 deadline for the first mission. He added that if Starship was not ready by that time, SpaceX would wait another two years before trying again.

Musk’s announcement comes just a day after he confirmed his departure from the administration of United States President Donald Trump, following a tumultuous few months in which his various businesses – including SpaceX and electric car maker Tesla – have come under growing strain.

Musk’s unofficial role leading Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has placed him in the crosshairs, as he has faced intense criticism for overseeing what has been decried as haphazard cuts to government programmes.

Faced with plunging stock prices and shareholder concern – most notably at Tesla – Musk said this week he would scale back his government role to focus on his private ventures.

Missed deadlines

In 2016, Musk said he wanted to send an uncrewed SpaceX vehicle to Mars as early as 2018, while he was targeting 2024 to launch the first crewed mission there.

But the mercurial entrepreneur’s ambitions for interplanetary exploration have been beset by repeated setbacks over recent years.

Most recently, on Tuesday, Musk was due to deliver a live webcast from the company’s Starbase in Texas following a ninth test flight of Starship that evening.

But the speech was cancelled without notice after Starship spun out of control and disintegrated about 30 minutes after launch, roughly halfway through its flight path, failing to achieve some of its most important test goals.

The mega-rocket re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere earlier than planned on Wednesday after a fuel leak triggered uncontrollable spinning in space, according to the Reuters news agency.

Posting on X after the failed flight, Musk said the test produced a lot of “good data to review” as he promised a faster launch “cadence” for the next several attempts.

There was also a failed launch in January – when the craft blew up moments after liftoff, raining debris over parts of the Caribbean and forcing commercial jetliners to change course – as well as in March.

Musk, who has spent billions of dollars on Starship’s development, says the initiative is part of SpaceX’s plan to colonise Mars.

The firm is also working with US government agency NASA to return humans to the Moon in 2027 onboard Starship, more than half a century since astronauts last walked on the lunar surface in 1972.

These efforts are a stepping stone towards launching NASA astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

The ninth launch of Elon Musk’s futuristic SpaceX Starship comes after two previous space rockets blew up.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s commercial space flight company, SpaceX, lost control of its ninth Starship test flight 30 minutes after the uncrewed rocket vehicle was launched into space from Texas, the Reuters news agency reports.

The Starship then re-entered the atmosphere earlier than planned on Wednesday after an onboard leak triggered uncontrollable spinning in space, according to Reuters.

The test flight flew beyond the point of past failures, before losing control, Reuters added.

In a post on social media, SpaceX said the Starship experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.

“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary,” the company added.

Musk has spent billions of dollars on Starship’s development. The South African-born billionaire claims the initiative is part of his commercial space flight company’s plan to colonise the planet Mars.

The latest test launch comes after a SpaceX Starship exploded shortly after takeoff on March 6.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) diverted several flights and briefly halted departures at four Florida airports, including Miami International Airport, as debris from that failed flight fell in the area.