Starship fifth launch
Elon Musk and SpaceX have grand designs that the rocket system will one day take humanity to Mars, making our species “multi-planetary”.
The US space agency, Nasa, will be watching the flight attempt closely. It has paid the company $2.8bn (£2.14bn) to develop Starship into a lander capable of returning astronauts to the Moon’s surface by 2026.
In space terms that is not that far away so Elon Musk’s team have been eager to get the rocket re-launched as soon as possible.
But the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) , the US government body that must approve the flight, had previously said there would be no launch before November as it reviewed the company’s permits.
Since last month the agency and Elon Musk have been in a public spat after the FAA said it was seeking to fine his company, SpaceX, $633,000 for allegedly failing to follow its license conditions and not getting permits for previous flights.
Before issuing a license the FAA reviews the impact of the flight, in particular the effect on the environment.
In response to the fine Musk threatened to sue the agency and SpaceX put out a public blog post, external hitting back against “false reporting” that part of the rocket was polluting the environment.
Currently the FAA only considers the impact on the immediate environment from rocket launches rather than the wider impacts of the emissions.
Dr Eloise Marais, professor of atmospheric chemistry and air quality at University College London, said the carbon emissions from rockets pale in comparison to other forms of transport but there are other planet-warming pollutants which are not being considered.
“The black carbon is one of the biggest concerns. The Starship rockets are using liquid methane. It’s a relatively new propellant, and we don’t have very good data of the amount of emissions that are coming from liquid methane,” she said.
Dr Marais said what makes black carbon from rockets so concerning is that they release it hundreds of miles higher into the atmosphere than planes.
“They’re putting pollutants in layers of the atmosphere where they stay for two and a half, or three years, compared to pollutants close to the surface of the earth that go away after about a few days to a week. So the longer that they stay in the atmosphere, the bigger the impact they have,” she said.
In April, Nasa released its first space sustainability strategy in which it said “the chemicals used during launch raise concerns about atmospheric impacts”. It did not lay out specific solutions but committed to work with its climate team on this issue.
