The 10th test flight of SpaceX’s rocket marks a jaw-dropping finale that could make space travel as frequent as travelling abroad.
The 10th test flight of SpaceX’s rocket marks a jaw-dropping finale that could make space travel as frequent as travelling abroad.
The idea of a holiday to Mars is becoming more than just a daydream – thanks to the latest launch of the most powerful rocket to ever have flown, ‘Starship’.
While previous launches ended explosively, success was finally achieved on the 26th of August during the tenth test flight in Texas. This was a giant leap towards NASA’s goal to send humans back to the moon in 2027 as part of the Artemis Programme.
Enter the players: The Starship rocket takes the lead role, accompanied by the booster: Super Heavy. With the sky as its stage, Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX) directs this performance as the audience of observers from Earth watches in suspense. A key spectator is NASA, assessing the suitability of Starship for their next production.
To set the scene: Act 1. January 2025. Flight Test 7. The SpaceX team observed a harmonic response from the rocket during testing. This is a form of resonance where vibrations in the spacecraft match the natural frequency of the structure, causing amplified stress on its components. However, in flight, this effect was much stronger than anticipated and resulted in a propellant leak, subsequent fires, and ultimately culminated in the rocket’s explosion. A catastrophic firework of debris was observed across the sky in the Bahamas, raining over the Turks and Caicos Islands. Consequently, the Federal Aviation Administration delayed several flights in Florida by an average of one hour. Despite this, there was an element of success to the story – the Super Heavy booster, which detached nearly four minutes into the flight as planned, was retrieved by the SpaceX team via a “chopsticks” technique, evoking raucous applause from the audience. Subsequently, Musk posted on X, “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”
Act 2. March. Flight Test 8. A similar event of “rapid unscheduled disassembly” occurred, according to the SpaceX team. Starship lost control shortly after launch due to a hardware failure that resulted in the unexpected ignition of fuel, causing several engines to shut down. This second explosion was déjà vu for the audience, who once again saw falling debris and experienced flight disruption.
Act 3. May. Flight Test 9. In this attempt, having learned from previous flight tests, Starship made it to space after detaching from the Super Heavy booster. However, it was prevented from achieving its goal to deploy satellites due to the destabilisation of its attitude control caused by a methane leak. It re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere in an “off-nominal attitude” before debris was, for a third time, seen cascading over the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, the Super Heavy booster exploded before reaching its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Nevertheless, this was the first flight to reuse the booster retrieved during Flight 7, a significant achievement for SpaceX toward Musk’s goal of reusable spacecraft.
Following these three acts, a fourth explosion occurred. This time on the launchpad – before Starship even took to the stage. This was likely due to the failure of a pressurised tank storing gaseous Nitrogen.
However, with each tragic flaw, SpaceX was gathering valuable data to drive improvements, optimising Starship towards a successful 60-minute finale…
Act 4: August. Flight Test 10. The booster landed in the Gulf of Mexico as planned, and Starship deployed eight test dummy satellites before returning to Earth. While parts of the rocket caught fire, resulting from stress testing, the explosion never reached the scale of previous spectacles.
So, what does this mean?
Musk plans for Starship to be used for human transport by next year. The success of Flight 10 has taken it one step closer to being cast as NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) in the execution of the Artemis Programme. This aims to beat China in humanity’s race back to the moon. Once there, they will collect samples, perform experiments and observe the lunar environment.
Flight 10 achieved some of NASA’s key objectives, including the transfer of cryogenic (extremely cold) fuel between tanks in the spacecraft. This transfer is crucial for travelling to the moon, as the volumes of fuel needed are so large that they must be stored and used during the mission to refuel. The data from Flight 10 is now being used to assess how well this worked, contributing towards and accelerating the development of the Artemis programme.
The play ends with a flash forward – what happens in the sequel?
Musk aims to make Mars a thriving city for humans in the next 20-30 years, using a reusable transport system capable of providing daily launches. He believes that “becoming multiplanetary is critical to ensuring the long-term survival of humanity”.
However, while Flight 10 marks a significant plot point, there are still many acts to unfold. There will need to be several more successful showings of Starship, and it must receive certification from NASA before it can become an official transport system to the Moon and Mars.
Less than 100 years ago, humans managed to overtake the speed of sound for the first time. Since then, aircraft have undergone the process of test flight, improve, repeat. This crucial method has resulted in the many aircraft we use daily to travel around the world. With a similar process being followed with spacecraft, who’s to say that a holiday to Mars can’t be a reality in the coming years?