SpaceX may get clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to complete the next Starship launch as early as next week. The FAA has been a major holdup in SpaceX’s attempts to get more iterations of Starship off the ground. Elon Musk has been quite critical about the FAA’s process, even going so far as to claim SpaceX will sue the FAA for regulatory overreach, including stifling Starship’s first test flight.
Previously, the FAA issued a statement saying it didn’t expect to issue a license for Starship to launch again until “late November” at the earliest. However, SpaceX has now issued a statement saying it expects to possibly have a launch set for the next Starship launch as early as October 13, pending the FAA’s regulatory approval.
However, SpaceX has not confirmed whether it expects to actually receive a license for Starship’s fifth test flight. It could be that the company hopes that Musk’s recent comments about suing the FAA will sway the regulatory body to push things forward sooner rather than later. Considering NASA is also waiting on the proven success of Starship to help highlight the full possibilities of its Artemis missions, and SpaceX itself wants to use Starship to push its other missions further—like a manned mission to Mars.
But, before any of that can happen, the company has to get its spacecraft into the air and prove that Starship has what it takes to actually pull off those launches consistently, which is why this latest test is such an important one. See, Starship hasn’t had the best history of launches so far. The first exploded shortly after take-off, and subsequent flights have faired better, but not to the point that SpaceX’s other rockets are.
The hope is that Starship’s fifth test flight will be the smoking gun to change all of that, especially if SpaceX manages to catch Starship on the way back down. And it just might work out for the company, as the FAA updated its statement to CNBC on Tuesday, removing the original estimate for November. As such, we could very likely see that launch happening sooner rather than later.
