There’s rather a lot using on the debut flight of SpaceX’s Starship V3 megarocket — not the least of that are NASA’s Artemis moon touchdown ambitions.
The Starship launch is scheduled to happen in the present day (Could 21) from SpaceX’s Starbase take a look at web site in South Texas, throughout a 90-minute window that opens at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT; 5:30 p.m. native Texas time). You possibly can watch it right here at Area.com when the time comes and see our newest Starship V3 launch updates for extra.
The flight would be the twelfth total for Starship, and it will likely be broadly much like earlier efforts — a suborbital jaunt that ends with managed ocean splashdowns of Starship’s Tremendous Heavy booster and its Ship higher stage. However the automobile concerned is kind of new, and SpaceX expects a lot out of it.
A bigger (and better?) Starship megarocket
The 408-foot-tall (124 meters) V3 (“Version 3”) is bigger and more powerful than previous Starship iterations, which were already the biggest and most powerful rockets ever built, and it sports a number of other important upgrades as well.
For starters, it’s outfitted with the new V3 Raptor engine — 33 of them on Super Heavy and six on Ship — which provides more heft, and a far more streamlined design, than its predecessors.
The V3 Super Heavy also now has just three grid fins (which help it steer its way back to Earth for recovery and reuse) instead of four. And the “hot stage ring” — the structure that marks the meeting point of Super Heavy and Ship — is now attached to the booster, meaning it can be reused, whereas previously it had fallen away during flight. (Starship engages in “hot stage” separation, meaning Ship fires its engines before it has detached from Super Heavy.)
Super Heavy’s fuel transfer tube, which funnels propellant from its main tank to all 33 Raptors, “has been completely redesigned and is now roughly the size of a Falcon 9 first stage,” SpaceX wrote in an update last week. This modification permits all 33 engines to start out up concurrently and can enhance the velocity and reliability of in-flight maneuvers, in line with the corporate.
V3 of Ship, in the meantime, “incorporates a clean-sheet redesign of its propulsion programs,” SpaceX wrote. “These adjustments allow a brand new Raptor startup technique, improve propellant tank quantity and enhance the response management system used for steering whereas in flight. The propulsion updates additionally scale back contained volumes within the aft finish of the automobile that might entice propellant leakage.”
Ship’s PEZ-dispenser-like deployment mechanism has been upgraded as properly, enabling speedier ejection of payloads. We’ll see this mechanism in motion on in the present day’s flight: Ship will deploy 20 dummy Starlink satellites, in addition to two precise Starlinks outfitted with particular cameras that can scan Ship’s warmth defend. (On earlier flights, Ship has deployed simply eight to 10 dummy Starlinks.)
There are different important Ship adjustments as properly, the replace relates. The V3 automobile “is now designed to be able to long-duration flights with extra environment friendly response management programs, isolation valves for high-pressure gases, 100% vacuum jacketing protection of the header feed system, a high-voltage electrically actuated cryogenic recirculation system, and a devoted system for managing cryogenic propellant interactions with the engines throughout prolonged coasts in house.”
V3 Ship additionally options 4 “docking drogues” — small receptacles that enable it to hyperlink up with specifically modified (and never but constructed) “tanker” Ships — in addition to propellant line connections enabling these tankers to switch their gas. This improve is a really massive deal, for each Ship headed to the moon, Mars and different deep-space locales will should be fueled up in house a dozen occasions or extra.
At present’s flight will even mark the debut of the second launch pad at Starbase, which options advances of its personal. As an example, its propellant farm can load gas into the megarocket sooner, in line with SpaceX. And the “chopstick arms” of Pad 2’s launch tower, that are designed to catch returning Tremendous Heavy boosters and Ships, are shorter and nimbler.
“Collectively, these new parts are designed to allow a step-change in Starship capabilities and intention to unlock the automobile’s core features, together with full and fast reuse, in-space propellant switch, deployment of Starlink satellites and orbital information facilities, and the flexibility to ship folks and cargo to the moon and Mars,” SpaceX wrote within the replace.
Will it actually land on the moon?
And the moon is a vacation spot for Starship V3 within the not-too-distant future. If all goes to plan, the automobile will land astronauts on the lunar floor throughout NASA’s Artemis 4 mission, which the agency aims to launch in late 2028.
Starship will have to check a lot of boxes before it flies that mission, however. For example, the vehicle has yet to reach Earth orbit; all 11 of its test flights to date (Flight 1 launched in April 2023) have been suborbital, as today’s will be. It also needs to demonstrate off-Earth refueling and be outfitted with a life-support system and other astronaut accoutrements.
Such milestones must be met soon if SpaceX wants to stay on NASA’s Artemis program timeline.
The agency plans to launch its crewed Artemis 3 mission to Earth orbit in mid- to late 2027. This will be a docking test between Artemis’ Orion crew capsule and one or both of the program’s privately developed lunar landers — Ship (by itself, without Super Heavy) and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon vehicle. If Ship isn’t ready and Blue Moon is, NASA will presumably go with the latter on Artemis 3, putting the Blue Origin vehicle in pole position for the moon a year later.
Blue Moon has a lot of work to do as well, of course; it has yet to get off the ground. But that could change soon: Blue Origin plans to launch an uncrewed test flight to the lunar south pole with a prototype lander called Blue Moon Mark 1 later this year. It will launch on a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket, which is also facing its own hurdles. New Glenn’s recent NG-3 launch suffered an upper-stage failure, leading to the loss of its satellite payload. Blue Origin will need to fix that issue before Blue Moon Mark 1 can fly.
What if Starship V3 doesn’t work?
Failure on V3’s debut launch could therefore be a big deal — especially if the fix requires significant modification of a key Starship system or subsystem. SpaceX needs to move quickly at this point in Starship’s development and cannot afford many more long delays. (Getting V3 to the pad took a while; Starship hasn’t flown since October 2025.)
A subpar flight could also have short-term financial consequences.
SpaceX is gearing up for its initial public offering next month, which is predicted to worth the corporate at a file $1.75 trillion or so. A catastrophic Starship failure within the leadup to the market debut may have an effect on that valuation, given how central the automobile is to SpaceX’s future: The corporate has stated that Starship might be its workhorse over the lengthy haul, doing all the pieces from satellite tv for pc launches to crewed Mars missions to “point-to-point” transportation round Earth.
If SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk is nervous about V3’s debut, nonetheless, he is not exhibiting it.
“The Starship manufacturing pipeline is full and can full roughly 10 extra ships and about half that variety of boosters this 12 months, so, if one thing goes flawed, it is not going to be a significant setback, until the launch stand is destroyed,” Musk said on Monday (Could 18) through X, the social media platform that he owns.