The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that it has approved a commercial launch license for the third full-scale test flight of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket.
this is The final regulatory hurdle Before SpaceX launched Starship from South Texas. The third flight of the world’s most powerful rocket is scheduled for Thursday morning, following two test launches last year.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster will lift off from the Starbase test site on the Texas Gulf Coast, a few miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) rocket’s launch window will begin Thursday at 7 a.m. CDT and extend for 110 minutes.
“The FAA has determined that SpaceX meets all safety, environmental, policy, and financial responsibility requirements,” the regulator said in a statement.
“This license applies to all phases of the proposed OFT-3 (Orbital Flight Test-3) operations,” the FAA said. “This includes preflight preparation and takeoff from Texas, the Super Heavy Booster splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Starship vehicle splashdown in the Indian Ocean.”
This is the first time SpaceX has targeted a Starship splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Last year’s two test flights were scheduled to culminate in a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, but SpaceX said it will also accomplish several additional test objectives, including restarting the Raptor engine for the first time in space. The trajectory of this launch was changed. .
The FAA conducted a “staged environmental assessment” to study the environmental impacts of Starship’s re-entry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Federal officials agreed to SpaceX’s proposal.
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If Starship were to take off at the start of Thursday’s launch window, it would take off nearly 40 minutes before sunrise at Starbase. This will be Starship’s first nighttime launch, but it will be timed close enough to sunrise that sunlight could illuminate the rocket’s expanding engine plume as it rises into the atmosphere.
Launches at dusk are spectacular, with sunlight often reflecting off ice crystals in the rocket’s exhaust path, creating the so-called “jellyfish” effect. This colorful phenomenon is visually striking against a dark sky before sunrise or after sunset. Of course, visibility of the rocket’s jellyfish exhaust trail depends on cloud cover, but assuming clear skies, Starship’s launch at the opening of Thursday’s launch window will likely be far away in Houston and other Gulf Coast locations. It may also be visible from the area.
The Starbase weather forecast for Thursday looks mostly good in terms of cloud cover, with no thunderstorms in the official National Weather Service forecast. But forecasters are predicting strong winds overnight Wednesday into Thursday, with gusts of 20 to 30 mph. SpaceX has not disclosed any wind speed limits for Starship launches. Patchy fog may also occur overnight into Thursday morning, but this is not expected to be a factor in the launch other than observation conditions.
![The exhaust plume of the Falcon 9 rocket is seen illuminated by sunlight after its pre-sunrise liftoff in 2018.](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/41281636860_abc46fdff0_k-640x427.jpg)
The first Starship test flight last April had mixed results. After an explosion from the rocket’s Raptor engine damaged the launch pad and caused several of the booster’s engines to fail, the rocket lost control and self-destructed minutes after liftoff.
SpaceX has upgraded the pad with a water flooding system to protect the starbase’s ground infrastructure from the blast and heat generated by the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor engines. Engineers also improved engine reliability and changed the way Starship’s upper stage separates from the super heavy booster within minutes of flight. SpaceX also introduced a new “hot staging” technology that ignites the upper stage’s six Raptor engines seconds before the stage separates.
All these changes worked like a charm during the second Starship launch in November, with Starship’s upper stage almost reaching its target speed. During a planned evacuation of excess liquid oxygen, Starship developed a leak that resulted in a “burning event” that ultimately caused the rocket’s computer to issue a self-destruct command.
The Super Heavy booster was to attempt a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico as a test of SpaceX’s plan to recover and reuse the giant Starship’s first stage. The booster also self-destructed in the upper atmosphere after part of its engine, which was supposed to pull it back toward the offshore landing zone, lost pressure in its oxidizer turbo pump. SpaceX traced the cause of the problem to a clogged filter in the liquid oxygen supply.