2025 promises to be a big year for SpaceX and its flagship, Starship. Elon Musk’s company has planned a total of 25 launches of its megarocket in the next 12 months alone, and the first will take place this Monday starting at 4:00 p.m. CT (10:00 p.m. Spanish time). With the aim of achieving a fully reusable launcher capable of carrying heavy loads into space, the company has prepared a new test in which the main novelty will be the deployment of models with the same size and weight as the new generation Starlink satellites. .
This is how SpaceX tells it in a release in which he explains that, although the launch window opens on Monday, January 13 at 4:00 p.m. CT, “the schedule is dynamic and is likely to change,” not only by time, but also by day, since Musk has permission to launch from its facilities on Boca Chica beach (New Mexico, USA) until Thursday, January 16.
The Starship structure is made up of two parts: on the one hand, the first stage, called SuperHeavy, more than 70 meters high and powered by 33 Raptor thrusters; and Starship or Ship, the upper stage about 50 meters high in which the cargo is planned to travel (including, in the future, human crews) and which consists of another 6 thrusters. Three minutes after takeoff, both stages will separate and continue their separate ways: SuperHeavy will have a short parabolic trip that will take it in less than seven minutes until its return in the Gulf of Mexico, if all goes well, to be captured again. in flight by the sticks of the landing platform.
Starship will complete a longer loop to almost circle the Earth. On that journey, it will deploy its cargo, ten Starlink satellite simulators, in addition to starting engines in space. It will then carry out a soft landing in the Indian Ocean, so we will not see the recovery of the upper stage this time.
New improvements and a new generation rocket
The rocket, which is part of the new generation of Starship, has new improvements, especially focused on adding reliability and performance to the upper stage. Specifically, the front flaps have been reduced and moved towards the nose of the rocket, away from the heat shield, “which significantly reduces its exposure to re-entry heat, while simplifying the underlying mechanisms and protective tiles,” they explain. from SpaceX.
The propulsion system has also been redesigned, with 25% larger motors, in addition to including new tiles in the heat shield and a backing layer to protect it from parts that become detached or damaged. This system is critical in reentry, in which the rocket has to withstand temperatures of more than 1,600 degrees.
Improvements have also been introduced in the rocket’s avionics (the systems that collect and process information from the sensors and make the appropriate decisions so that the actuators perform the maneuvers required by the launcher), increasing its capacity for increasingly more missions. as well as the integration of new communication antennas, inertial navigation sensors and redesigned star tracking. “With Starlink, the vehicle is capable of transmitting more than 120 Mbps of real-time high-definition video and telemetry in each phase of flight, providing invaluable engineering data to rapidly iterate across all systems,” they indicate from SpaceX.
In addition, several experiments will be carried out to stress the rocket as much as possible during reentry. For example, in the upper stage of Starship, a significant amount of tiles will be removed to test vulnerable areas of the vehicle, in addition to testing different materials.
Meanwhile, Super Heavy will reuse one of the engines that survived the fifth Starship test (in which the first stage was rescued by the tower sticks). The goal is for those spectacular images to be repeated again. However, if the necessary safety conditions are not met, the rocket will head to the Gulf of Mexico for a fiery landing and soft splashdown, which will likely result, as in the last test, in a final explosion. The decision will be made during the flight, so your final destination will not be known until minutes before landing. “We do not accept concessions when it comes to guaranteeing the safety of the public and our team, and the return will only take place if the conditions are appropriate,” the company indicates.
An intense year for Starship
Starship’s goal is more than ambitious: the idea is to use this enormous launcher for the next missions to the Moon and, later, to the first human inhabitants on Mars. And this year will be a huge litmus test to prove that SpaceX has its part ready, one of the most vital of the new Artemis Program, the continuation of the Apollo missions, although with its sights also set on the Red Planet.
«This new year will be transformative for Starship – they point out from the company –, with the aim of reusing the entire system online and carrying out increasingly ambitious missions as we move towards the possibility of sending humans and cargo to Earth orbit. , the Moon and Mars.
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