However, the government agency added in a statement that the launch firm still has to overcome additional hurdles relating to policy, payload and safety before a final authorisation would be issued.
Starship is the collective name for the SpaceX Super Heavy booster rocket and Starship spacecraft, destined to fly humans to Mars one day.
It’s currently limited to just five flights per year, but SpaceX wants to increase the cadence to fortnightly to allow it to continually perfect its design.
The latest clearance, delivered in a 53-page report, said increasing the number of launches would not “significantly impact the quality of the human environment”.
It added that as a condition of the clearance, SpaceX must perform community duties to offset its environmental impact, including hosting quarterly beach clean-ups and donating to environmental organisations.
The decision will be welcomed by the Elon Musk-founded company, but will likely draw criticism from the aviation industry, which has previously had to ground flights when previous Starship prototypes have exploded.
The last flight, for example, Starship’s eighth, saw its upper stage break apart, causing debris to rain down on Earth.
PROMOTED CONTENT
The incident, later blamed on an “energetic event” in the vehicle’s rear, led to airports in Florida halting flights for 80 minutes as fragments of Starship streaked through the sky like fireworks.
The company’s founder, Elon Musk, called the failure a “minor setback” despite it closely mirroring the result of the previous blast-off in January.
“Rockets are hard. Not easy, making life multi-planetary,” Musk said. “But we learnt a good amount in building the new ship design and the flight.”
Starship’s eighth flight test lifted off from Starbase in Texas on Thursday, 6 March.
Roughly three minutes into the flight, the Super Heavy booster separated from its upper stage before returning to its launch pad to be caught for the second time in a row.
Starship continued onwards on its planned journey to space before an incident led to the loss of several Raptor engines.
Footage from the livestream showed the upper stage spinning before communication was lost nine minutes and 30 seconds after lift-off.
The explosion led to four airports – Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando – issuing a ground stop while vehicle fragments could reportedly be seen hurtling through the sky as far away as the Caribbean and Pennsylvania.
Afterwards, SpaceX doubled down on its philosophy that failures during test flights are part of its natural development cycle.
“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability,” it said.
“We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”
Starship testing began in April 2023 when the spacecraft failed to reach orbit, but culminated in the first stage incredibly returning to the original launch pad and being caught by mechanical arms in October last year.
Its previous test flight, though, which ended in a similar failure, saw SpaceX radically overhaul the vehicle’s design.
Alterations debuting on flight seven included adding new sensors to the launch site to make the pincer-style catches more accurate and redesigning the propulsion system and heat shield.
The next flight is rumoured to take place in weeks, though no confirmation has been issued.
Adam Thorn
Adam is a journalist who has worked for more than 40 prestigious media brands in the UK and Australia. Since 2005, his varied career has included stints as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer and editor for publications as diverse as Fleet Street newspaper The Sunday Times, fashion bible Jones, media and marketing website Mumbrella as well as lifestyle magazines such as GQ, Woman’s Weekly, Men’s Health and Loaded. He joined Momentum Media in early 2020 and currently writes for Australian Aviation and World of Aviation.
Receive the latest developments and updates on Australia’s space industry direct to your inbox. Subscribe today to Space Connect here.
