Two of the world’s biggest rockets are getting ready to blast-off again soon, and they both come from Elon Musk’s space company.
First up is Falcon Heavy, which will be making just its seventh flight since the vehicle was first demonstrated to much fanfare in 2018.
Heavy is set to launch late Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying the Jupiter 3/EchoStar 24 broadband communications satellite for Hughes Network Systems. The big telecom bird supports networks that include in-flight wifi, mobile network backhaul and maritime connections.
Falcon Heavy is made up of three Falcon 9 boosters strapped together and topped with a second stage that will carry the satellite to its operating orbit. the tri-booster setup is ideal for larger, heavier payloads, but the real spectacle comes about ten minutes after launch when the two side boosters return to nearby landing zones on shore for nearly simultaneous autonomous touchdowns.
Among the reasons Falcon Heavy has been so sparsely used is that an upgraded Falcon 9 was able to handle more missions. And shortly after Falcon Heavy’s debut Musk announced that his magnum opus rocket, Starship, would be the future and the focus of the company.
Starship’s final version is intended to be humanity’s largest rocket ever, capable of transferring large payloads and people to orbit, the moon, Mars and beyond. NASA has already signed up with SpaceX to use Starship for its upcoming Artemis missions to the moon and Musk has said the vehicle is a key part of finishing and maintaining his company’s Starlink broadband constellation.
But Starship’s development has not been as speedy as Musk first hoped. Several years after unveiling his full ambitions for Starship and sending humans to Mars, the vehicle has yet to make it to space.
Early prototypes of only the second stage of the vehicle made a series of uncrewed high-altitude test flights. Then, in April the full stack of a Starship mated with a Super Heavy booster blasted off, but exploded before leaving Earth’s atmosphere.
Now SpaceX is preparing to try again. Last week another Super Heavy booster was moved to the launch pad at the company’s development facility in south Texas. Booster 9 will undergo tests before being paired with Starship for another attempt at making it to space as soon as next month.
However, it’s not exactly clear when Starship will get the green light to fly from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which oversees commercial spaceflight. When it comes to Starship launch timelines, they’ve been much longer than both the FAA and Musk have anticipated.
The potential for Starship getting off the ground in the near future is especially doubtful at the moment. A coalition of environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against the FAA, alleging it didn’t perform adequate due diligence with respect to potential environmental impacts from Starship’s launch.