This has been a big week for SpaceX. Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket built by the company, underwent its third test launch on Thursday, but unlike the previous two attempts, it did not explode. Despite losing the actual spacecraft during the attempt to re-enter Earth, this is a huge success for Elon Musk’s company. SpaceX has lost a spacecraft, but NASA is working hard to preserve Voyager 1, the most distant man-made object in the universe.
But surely not exploding is a very low bar for a rocket? No, it’s not. It’s as if a rocket likes to explode. In fact, the day before the third Starship launch, a Japanese civilian rocket, Kairos, exploded shortly after takeoff. And Kairos is not particularly large. Its size means it’s smaller than something like SpaceX’s Falcon 9. And the thing is, Falcon 9 is a kid’s toy compared to Starship.
Once tested, it will not only be the largest rocket in human history, but also the most powerful. The launch system can carry 150 tons in reusable mode and 250 tons in expendable mode, the company said.
The first stage of the Starship system, the Super Heavy Booster, is powered by an unprecedented 33 Raptor engines capable of providing nearly 7,600 tons of thrust. The Starship spacecraft, the second stage of the system that actually carries cargo and astronauts, is powered by six Raptor engines, three of which are specifically designed to operate in the vacuum of space.
SpaceX is adding a surprising number of extremely powerful rocket engines to its Starship system. Given the fact that the company is doing something that has never been done before, an explosion is more likely than an almost complete success of the flight, and that’s what we’ve seen.
And unlike government space agencies like NASA, SpaceX is a startup. This also means that they follow the startup mantra of failing faster and repeating it. While NASA tries to get everything right and delays missions until it’s actually sure, SpaceX wants to complete the mission so that even if it fails, it can learn from it and repeat.
NASA and SpaceX rely heavily on each other, despite their diametrically opposed approaches. SpaceX relies heavily on NASA funding to develop Starship, but the success of NASA’s Artemis mission, which will return humans to the moon for the first time in nearly half a century, means the Elon Musk-led company will be able to complete work on Starship in time. It depends on whether you can complete it or not.
In the same week that NASA lost Starship, the agency “regained” the Voyager 1 probe. This probe was the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space beyond the heliosphere, and remains the most distant man-made object in the universe. As of this writing, this robotic spacecraft is more than 24 million kilometers from Earth. To put that into perspective, this is more than 162 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
But since November 2023, the NASA team has only received what they call “inconsistent” data from the spacecraft. After months of fear that the pioneering spacecraft would be lost after half a century of service, NASA finally has a clue as to what’s wrong with Voyager 1 and is working to fix the problem. It may be on its way.
Interestingly, if we lost a spacecraft, it would be less of a scientific loss than an emotional loss. Voyager 1 and its sibling Voyager 2 were launched in 1977 for a mission that was originally scheduled to last five years. Since then, he has exceeded that mission period by more than 40 years. When was the last time you bought something that lasted for almost 50 years?
