According to news on January 11, SpaceX executives recently stated that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will approve the third flight test of the Starship system in February this year, when the Starship is expected to take off again. SpaceX's Starship will conduct two test flights in 2023, in April and November. Now the company says it will conduct its third flight test as soon as February 2024.
At a media briefing on Tuesday, NASA discussed the latest developments in its Artemis lunar exploration program. Jessica Jensen, SpaceX's vice president of customer operations and integration, said the company is already applying for approval for a third flight of the Starship system. "From a hardware readiness perspective, our goal is to be ready in January of this year. From an FAA approval perspective, we are applying for a license for the third flight," she said.
Jensen added that SpaceX is currently completing the corrective actions required after the second flight test of Starship, and the company expects the FAA to approve a third flight test in February this year. "We hope to get the license in February. So, it looks like the third flight test will happen in February of this year," she said.
Another topic discussed in detail during Tuesday's meeting was the off-ground propellant transfer planned by SpaceX and NASA as part of completing the Artemis 3 mission in a few years. In 2021, NASA selected Starship as the manned lander for the Artemis 3 mission. The two astronauts will travel to the lunar surface aboard Starship and then return to lunar orbit after completing the exploration mission.
Because rockets and spacecraft consume most of their fuel as they escape Earth's gravity, large spacecraft like Starship need to refuel in orbit before continuing on to the moon. One open question is how many flights will be needed to successfully refuel Starship in orbit.
The issue came up during Tuesday's meeting. Johnson's initial answer didn't directly give a specific number, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson even jumped in to make sure the question was answered.
Jensen responded that successfully refueling the Artemis 3 mission's Starship in space would require "about 10" flights, although that number could be adjusted based on the results of tests of propellant transfer capabilities. She said that although in-orbit refueling is a necessary task for the Artemis 3 mission, the upcoming third flight test of Starship "will not be a mission to transfer propellant to the orbiting spacecraft."
Jensen added: “It sounds complicated, it sounds scary, it looks like a big, vague thing, but when you break it down into its different parts, we’ve actually achieved almost all the complexities in the operational plan now and now it’s just a matter of piecing it together.”
Amit Kshatriya, deputy assistant administrator for NASA's Moon-to-Mars Program, added that one reason why so many flights were previously estimated for in-orbit propellant refueling is that NASA and SpaceX conducted multiple modeling and analyzes to try to accurately estimate how to refuel Starship.
"When we actually try to do this in orbit, that's when things really come to light," Ksatria said. "SpaceX has been very transparent with us, and we've been sharing with them a lot of the data we have about what problems we encounter when refueling in cryogenic environments."
Kesatria added that in addition to testing the propellant transfer plan, NASA also hopes to complete an unmanned test landing of Starship on the moon before Artemis 3.
As announced at the meeting, NASA's current goal is to implement the Artemis 2 mission in September 2025, sending a crew of four to fly around the moon and back. There are three NASA astronauts on the crew: Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, the first astronaut of color to leave Earth orbit, and mission specialist Christina Koch, the first female astronaut to leave Earth orbit. Also among the crew members is Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who will become the first non-NASA astronaut to leave low-Earth orbit.
Nelson said the Artemis 3 mission will follow up in September 2026. That goal sounds aggressive given the timing of Starship flight tests and propellant transfer tests.