Starship

The FAA begins a third mishap investigation into SpaceX’s Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster, which were lost during a test Thursday.

The free-flying commercial space station will permanently host four crewmembers and is scheduled to launch before the International Space Station’s decommissioning.

The second and third missions in the space agency’s Artemis program—which seeks to return Americans to the moon—were each delayed nearly one year.

Challenges persist with spacesuits and lunar lander development, the watchdog agency said.

Saturday’s launch again ended in the loss of both Starship stages, prompting another FAA mishap investigation and potential delays to NASA’s Artemis moon mission program.

We try to answer that question and more in this week’s Future of FLYING newsletter.

Musk’s previous predictions haven’t come to fruition, but this time, a fresh launch license backs the SpaceX CEO’s timeline.

The company says the spacecraft’s first flight test, which ended in flames, ‘provided numerous lessons learned.’

Starship has been grounded since April after its maiden voyage ended in an explosion, but the massive spacecraft is getting closer to a second test flight.

The FAA pushed back on CEO Elon Musk’s assertion that the world’s most powerful rocket is ready for a second test flight after an April explosion.