SpaceX’s Moon-Bound Starship Rocket Could Go to Space This Year

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave a presentation Thursday evening about plans for Starship, his company’s next-generation rocket that is meant to take humans to the moon and eventually Mars. The billionaire, who’s well known for his bold (and often off-the-mark) predictions, told the audience, “At this point I feel highly confident that we will make it to orbit this year.”

The shiny Starship system consists of two parts: a massive lower stage rocket booster known as Super Heavy that’s supposed to boast twice the thrust of the Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo astronauts to the moon; and the actual Starship crew spacecraft that sits on top of the booster. When launched, Super Heavy takes Starship into space before separating and returning to Earth, while Starship is designed to go out and land on the surface of the moon (and return to Earth when the mission is over).

Both parts are meant to be entirely reusable—something that SpaceX has pioneered with its flagship Falcon 9 rocket.

Musk gave the presentation from Boca Chica, Texas, at the company’s Starship testing site (nicknamed Starbase), with the stacked 400-foot-tall Starship-Super Heavy system as a backdrop. Previous versions of Starship have gone on mid-altitude flights about 6.2 miles high, and one even made a clean vertical landing last May.

Since then, SpaceX has been awaiting permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch Starship into space. The FAA is expected to finish an environmental assessment by Feb. 28 that will either clear for Starship to fly into orbit just weeks later or continue to delay future tests. “I am optimistic that we will get approval,” said Musk.

At worst, Musk believes SpaceX could simply launch from Cape Canaveral, where they already have approval. That would set Starship’s first orbital flight back by about six to eight months, he said.

It’s still unclear when exactly Starship will fly up into orbit, but it’s already got some official missions on its docket. SpaceX wants to use Starship to launch the second version of its Starlink satellites. Next year the spacecraft is supposed to take Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and a dozen artists of his choosing on a trip around the moon and back.

And NASA is paying SpaceX $2.9 billion to use the vehicle as a lunar lander. When NASA astronauts go back to the moon (in 2025 at the earliest), they will disembark onto the surface from Starship—much to Jeff Bezos’ chagrin.