SpaceX is aiming to reach a cadence of one Starship launch every two weeks “faster” than late 2025, company CEO and billionaire Elon Musk said on Sunday.
What Happened: Starbase General Manager Kathy Lueders said at the National Congress of Space Activities held in Matamoros late last week that the company is looking to launch one Starship every two weeks by late 2025.
“We will be much faster than that Musk,” wrote on X on Sunday, accelerating the timeline provided by Lueders.
Last week, SpaceX said that it is planning its next and sixth flight test of its ambitious Starship launch vehicle as early as Nov. 18. For the next test flight, the company aims to catch Starship's booster back at the launch site as on the last flight and splash down the upper stage in the Indian Ocean.
Past Flights: On Starship’s fifth flight test in October, it lifted off from Starbase, and the booster returned to Earth after propelling Starship to space. The booster was subsequently caught by the launch tower at Starbase.
The Starship, meanwhile, went on to space and splashed down on target in the Indian Ocean.
The recovery of the booster was a key objective of the flight test and demonstrated the reusability of the Starship’s design. SpaceX is aiming to make the Starship a completely reusable spacecraft that can fly multiple times, thereby reducing the cost of spaceflight.
The test flights before the one in October accomplished less. Starship flew for the first time in April 2023.
Why It Matters: Starship is key to NASA's dreams of taking humans back to the surface of the Moon.
NASA's Artemis 3 mission slated to launch no earlier than September 2026 is expected to enable humans to land back on the surface of the moon with the help of a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft. The last time humans set foot on the Moon was in 1972 with Apollo 17. Since then, no crew has traveled beyond low-Earth orbit.
Musk, meanwhile, is eyeing taking humans to Earth's neighboring planet Mars aboard the Starship. In September, he said that the first Starship launch to Mars is expected in 2026 and that it will not have a crew on board.
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Photo courtesy: SpaceX
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