SpaceX’s Founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has announced on Twitter that he hopes to see the company’s Starship make its first orbital flight as early as next month. This comes after a series of high-altitude flights in 2020 and 2021, in which a three-engine version of the spacecraft flew to the stratosphere before attempting a series of landing attempts, ending with a successful landing on May 5th, 2021.
Following this, SpaceX announced that it would begin production on more Raptor engines, testing Super Heavy booster prototypes and preparing for the first orbital launch of Starship. This launch is scheduled to take place at the company’s Starbase facility in Texas, with the Super Heavy booster returning for a landing in the Gulf of Mexico and the Starship vehicle continuing on for a trip to orbit before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii.
The launch has faced delays due to the process of obtaining a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration, which required SpaceX to make modifications to its launch plan. Despite these delays, the company is still on track to participate in NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface this decade.
