Late on the evening of June 13, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finally released a long-awaited report on the environmental impact of the SpaceX Starbase spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas. As expected, SpaceX has passed its notoriously long-running mandatory environmental review, and is one step closer to Starship’s first orbital flight.

FAA gives green light to first Starship orbital flight

In fact, the FAA released two findings on June 13 – a summary of the environmental assessment and a detailed action plan for the company to implement . Recall that the FAA began reviewing the program in November 2020 immediately after SpaceX began building the Starbase spaceport infrastructure on the Gulf Coast, near the city of Brownsville, Texas. In the past six months, the regulator has postponed the decision five times and taken additional time to review the program. The final verdict of the FAA expert commission is FONSI (Finding Of No Significant Impact).

This means that the FAA took the most favorable option for SpaceX – they recognized the program as such that it does not cause significant harm to nature and provided SpaceX with a list with the necessary measures to reduce it to a minimum. The conclusion of the Environmental Impact Statement was undesirable for Elon Musk’s company, which would have meant more “headaches” and could potentially significantly slow down the development of the program.

In total, SpaceX will have to take more than 75 separate environmental mitigation measures, the FAA said in a press release. They concern the protection of water resources, the limitation of noise levels and the control of biohazardous materials. Going forward, the FAA will review SpaceX for these additional criteria when issuing launch licenses.

Among the demands are SpaceX will coordinate with a “qualified biologist” on lighting checks to minimize the impact on sea turtles, operate a shuttle to move employees between the city of Brownsville and the Starbase facility, and clean up the local Boca Chica beach quarterly. In addition, SpaceX is required to contribute to local education and conservation efforts, including preparing a historical report on the events of the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War that took place in the area, as well as replacing missing ornaments on a local historical marker. SpaceX must also make an annual donation of at least $5,000 to organizations that protect endangered ocelots and birds of prey, as well as to the state recreational fishing program.

In a nutshell about the main achievements over the past year, to navigate the development of the Starship program:

• On May 6, 2021, Starship SN15 (the 15th production test vehicle and the fifth prototype) made the first fully successful high-altitude flight, taking off for 10 km and landing after that. This launch marked the transition of Starship and Super Heavy into the next phase of development – SpaceX began construction of the Starship SN20 prototype ship and the Super Heavy booster for the first orbital flight (they were recently scrapped).
• On August 6, 2021, SpaceX assembled for the first time a full-fledged Starship rocket prototype with both powers and a total length of 120 meters. After that, the rocket was again dismantled for additional tests of both stages separately, including burning the booster and checking it for leaks.
• On October 22, SpaceX fired the Raptor vacuum thruster on Starship 20 for the first time , and on November 12, fire tests took place in full configuration – with six Raptor oxygen-methane thrusters (three for maneuvering at low altitudes and in a dense atmosphere, in a vacuum) .
• On February 10, 2022, SpaceX again assembled a full-fledged prototype of the Starship rocket with both degrees, and this time not just for “fitting” – after all the checks, the engineers fully connected both parts of the rocket.
• On May 27, 2022, SpaceX rolled out the updated Starship 24 prototype to the launch pad at the Boca Chica launch site to the Super Heavy B7 launch vehicle, which is replenished with the latest Raptor 2 engines – since then, SpaceX engineers have been actively conducting various tests with both stages as part of the training program launch.

33 Raptor rocket engines, each producing 230 metric tons of forcepic.twitter.com/flQLb62MgZ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2022

The day before, SpaceX conducted tests simulating the capture and lifting of the “hands” of the 140-meter Mechazilla of the Super Heavy accelerator. The next step is to remove and install the SH B7 on the launch pad for firing tests.

When is the orbital launch of Starship – and what will it be

As we have repeatedly told in previous news, so far it is the American FAA regulator that has hampered the development of the Super Heavy and Starship creation program. A promising super-heavy rocket and ship being developed by SpaceX to replace the current Falcon family of rockets and Dragon spacecraft, designed to deliver cargo and people to low Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars. SpaceX is also developing, under a NASA contract, a Starship variant for the Artemis lunar program, which involves a manned flight and landing on the moon. and now the ball is in the SpaceX half of the field.

Until recently, SpaceX planned the first orbital flight of Starship (Super Heavy B7 + Starship S24) for the summer of 2022 – the main question now is how quickly SpaceX can complete all 75 measures required of it by the FAA, obtain a license, conduct all necessary tests and complete infrastructure preparation. Industry experts estimate that SpaceX will need at least several months to prepare. And if SpaceX does not have time to complete the first orbital launch of Starship by the end of this summer, then it is likely that it will take place before the end of 2022. So let’s keep our fingers crossed that everything goes according to plan.

Recall that back in May 2021, SpaceX sent a document describing the first Starship orbital flight to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). According to the test flight plan, some time after the launch from the launch pad of the SpaceX Starbase in Texas, the Super Heavy booster will separate and be driven in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Starship will go into orbit (at least 160 kilometers), perform an almost complete duck around the planet, enter the atmosphere , slowed down by engines and driven 100 kilometers from the island of Kauai, which is part of the Hawaiian archipelago.

What’s next

Back in 2002, starting his journey in private astronautics, Elon Musk formulated the main mission of SpaceX – the colonization of Mars and the transformation of mankind into an interplanetary civilization. In early June, Elon Musk shared a mini-presentation “Working to make life interplanetary” about the achievements and plans of SpaceX, where he once again mentioned this. At the end of 2021, Elon Musk expressed doubt in an interview that Starship would reach orbit the first time, but at the same time emphasized that he was “confident” in achieving this goal in 2022 and expects to complete up to a dozen test launches of Starship in 2022 in order to complete the test program and move on to the launch of real payloads in 2023 (these are preliminary dates). Back then, SpaceX was aiming for January 2022 with the first orbital launch of Starship, so the schedule moved down by at least half a year.

SpaceX plans to use Starship to launch a new generation of Starlink V2.0 Internet satellites (if Jeff Bezos does not interfere ). This should be the first commercial launch of Starship, but there is no timeline yet (they will depend on the future first test launch). In addition, SpaceX planned to send a tourist delegation led by a Japanese billionaire ( DearMoon mission ) on Starship to the Moon (flying without landing) in 2023. Another Starship tourist mission is part of the Polaris program , but there are no details yet, or even a rough timeline.

Mission to Mars. What Elon Musk said at the presentation of the SpaceX Starship interplanetary spacecraft