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On Friday afternoon—after much angst and anxious waiting by the spaceflight community—the Federal Aviation Administration issued a launch license to SpaceX for the launch of its Starship rocket from South Texas.

“After a comprehensive license evaluation process, the FAA determined SpaceX met all safety, environmental, policy, payload, airspace integration and financial responsibility requirements,” the agency said in a statement. “The license is valid for five years.”

Receiving this federal safety approval is the final regulatory step the company needed to take before being cleared to fly the largest rocket ever built. Now, the only constraints to launch are technical issues with the rocket or its ground systems. SpaceX is expected to hold a final readiness review this weekend before deciding to proceed with a launch attempt.

This could occur as soon as Monday. The company has a slew of road closures, temporary flight restrictions, and notices to mariners set up for April 17. The launch window is expected to open at 7 am local time in Texas (12:00 UTC). Backup launch opportunities are available on Tuesday and Wednesday.

SpaceX has been seeking federal approval to launch the massive Super Heavy rocket, with its Starship upper stage, for several years from Texas. The launch site is located near the Gulf of Mexico, just north of the Rio Grande River, and surrounded by wetlands. After completing an environmental assessment in June 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration said the company must undertake more than 75 actions to protect the lands and wildlife around the Boca Chica facility.

This week an official at the FAA, speaking on background, said SpaceX has been cooperative on those measures. “So far, they’ve done what they need to do with regard to environmental impact,” the official said. The FAA has responsibility for safety around the launch site and during a vehicle’s flight. It has worked through its procedures carefully and accommodated SpaceX as the technical design of the Starship launch system has changed.

SpaceX is calling this Starship launch an “integrated flight test.” It is the first time that the massive Super Heavy rocket will have taken off and the first time both vehicles will fly together. Under the nominal flight plan, the Super Heavy rocket will boost Starship toward space and, after separation, attempt to make a controlled splash down into the Gulf of Mexico about 30 to 35 km off the coast of Texas. SpaceX will not attempt to recover the booster on this flight.

In the meantime, the Starship vehicle will attempt to ascend to an altitude of 235 km and become “nearly orbital.” Starship’s engines will shut down at 9 minutes and 20 seconds into the flight, after which the vehicle will coast for more than an hour before entering Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. It will not complete a full orbit and is expected to make a high-velocity splash down about 225 km north of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. On the nominal timeline, this will occur 90 minutes after liftoff.

Overview of SpaceX's flight plan for Starship's integrated flight test.
Enlarge/ Overview of SpaceX’s flight plan for Starship’s integrated flight test.SpaceX

Because this is the first spaceflight for both vehicles, SpaceX is keeping the overall flight plan relatively simple. For example, Starship will not reignite its engines upon atmospheric reentry, nor attempt to make a controlled reentry into the ocean. Essentially, the goal for this flight is to gather data about the performance of both the first-stage booster and Starship upper stage in order to begin recovery attempts on future flights.

Super Heavy will be the largest and most powerful rocket to ever launch from Earth. However, SpaceX has taken an experimental approach toward developing this booster and Starship, so it is very far from a certainty that this flight will proceed without incident.


NASASpaceFlight

Starship ready for historic maiden flight, gains FAA launch license

written by Alejandro Alcantarilla Romera April 14, 2023

With SpaceX confirming Starship is now ready for flight, all eyes were on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to issue its launch license. That was finally granted on Friday evening.

Additionally, the company gave more details about the planned time frame for flight and the timeline for the launch. Ship 24 was also destacked from Booster 7 this week as teams are configuring the rocket’s flight termination system (FTS) before launch.

Starship Passes Review Ahead of Maiden Flight

After stacking Ship 24 on Booster 7 on April 5, SpaceX completed the final checkouts of the vehicles and proceeded into the final Flight Readiness Review (FRR) meeting ahead of Starship’s launch.

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This FRR meeting was conducted on April 8, when teams cleared the rocket for flight. Some open items remained afterward that SpaceX has been working through ahead of the Launch Readiness Review (LRR) meeting expected to occur two days before launch.

Both Flight Readiness Reviews and Launch Readiness Reviews are common meetings that SpaceX usually carries out on its most important missions, such as demonstration flights and crew flights. These were also present for every Shuttle mission. Each saw several FRR meetings at different levels within NASA, with a final “Agency FRR” meeting occurring just a few weeks before the launch.

These meetings do not always come out with a positive result, and major outstanding work can prompt the call to not proceed with a launch; in these cases, a “delta-FRR” meeting is called at a later time. It is understood that this latest Flight Readiness Review was a Delta Flight Readiness Review, and teams had agreed not to proceed with the flight on an earlier FRR.

The launch site at Starbase. (Credit: Nic Ansuini for NSF)

Sometimes, it is also likely that an FRR meeting comes out with a call from teams to proceed with the launch, but with open work still left to be completed. Usually, this is because it is considered to be of lesser importance or deemed solvable before the launch.

Some of the remaining open items ahead of Starship’s LRR concern the readiness of the rocket’s software and engine interfaces, with final checks occurring over these last days to close out these issues. As of writing, it is understood that Starship’s flight software has been finalized, and SpaceX is proceeding with final checks ahead of launch.

Before the FRR, a preliminary plan called for a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) to be performed on April 11. However, as part of the decisions taken during the meeting, SpaceX decided to forego this test and proceed directly with a launch. This option would give the teams time to close out issues while still keeping the opportunity to launch on April 17. 

Ship 24 Destacked for FTS Setup

In preparation for the launch, SpaceX destacked Ship 24 from Booster 7 to set up its flight termination system ahead of the flight. This FTS usually consists of an explosive charge, a detonator, and a control box that is in charge of detecting when the rocket veers off course and needs to trigger its termination.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zO1Tzbvnuu0%3Ffeature%3Doembed

In order to prevent an accidental trigger of the system during the handling of the vehicles, there’s a physical safety barrier that needs to be removed before launch. The location of the FTS on both stages is near the weld line for the common dome that separates the liquid methane and liquid oxygen tanks.

This location is accessible via aerial work platforms (AWP) for the booster, and the removal of the safety system can be performed without removing it from its launch pad. For the ship, however, this location is unreachable in a stacked configuration as it sits well above the 100-meter height limit of the largest AWPs that SpaceX has at Starbase. Therefore, a destack of Ship 24 from Booster 7 was needed in order to work on this system.

Once the safety system is removed from the FTS, Ship 24 will be able to be lifted back into place atop Booster 7 for one final time ahead of launch.

SpaceX Targets Launch No Earlier Than April 17, Releases Countdown

In the last week, SpaceX has also released a tentative time frame for the launch of Starship. While on social media, the company mentions a more general target of the third week of April, the current earliest tentative launch date is April 17, with SpaceX’s own website citing this as well. 

Nonetheless, the growing list of alerts and notices that needed to be published ahead of launch all point to this date as well. As of writing, there are already marine navigational hazard notices for launch and splashdown, Mexican airspace closure notices for launch, and even road closure notices for launch at Starbase.

The latter was confirmed through an amendment this week where the notice now shows that these closures for Highway 4, the main road to Starbase, are in order to conduct spaceflight activities. 

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The launch is also present on the FAA’s Current Operations Plan Advisory, which shows April 18 through April 22 as backup windows for this flight.  According to the advisory, if SpaceX were to attempt a launch on Monday, it would happen within a 3-hour, 5-minute window that should open at 7 AM CDT (12:00 UTC).

On Friday, the FAA approved the monster rocket’s test flight.

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SpaceX’s update also included the release of the launch timeline and plan for the mission. For this first flight of Starship, the booster will not attempt a landing back on “chopsticks” at the launch site. It will perform a boostback burn and land over the ocean several miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. It is understood that no recovery attempt will be performed for Booster 7.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tHa-37Bcg_Q%3Ffeature%3Doembed

Ship 24, on the other hand, will not attempt a soft touchdown and will instead impact the ocean at terminal velocity if it were to survive up until that point.

While SpaceX is now waiting on the launch license for Starship, it is expected to come out in time for a launch attempt on April 17 which would turn into a WDR were this regulatory approval not come by at the time. 

With Starship ready and a potential license set to be granted soon, the stage will be set for the launch of the world’s most powerful rocket ever created in just a few days.

Photos from Nic (@NicAnsuini) and Jack Beyer (@thejackbeyer for NSF).

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Updated/maj. 15-04-2023

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