NASA says SpaceX aims to launch another starship quickly

SpaceX is confident that damage to the launch pad used for its first Starship flight can be repaired and is on track to launch a second rocket as early as this summer, according to the leader of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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“That launchpad was blown out completely,” Bill Nelson, the administrator of the agency at the time, told lawmakers on Thursday during a hearing of the House Science Committee, referring to SpaceX's inaugural flight of the Starship on April 20. 

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“So far, SpaceX has still stated that they expect the launch pad to be rebuilt within at least two months of the first launch, and, concurrently, the launch of their second rocket will also take about two months,” Mr. Nelson said.

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A request for comment from SpaceX was not responded to. 

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Elon Musk's company SpaceX is reviewing flight data and assessing damage after the first flight of a rocket that SpaceX has called the most powerful rocket ever constructed, following a series of meetings with local officials, and regulatory and environmental agencies.

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The company's Starship rockets, which consist of a Super Heavy booster and a spacecraft stacked on top for the first phase of flight, are designed to carry out deep-space missions and satellite launches, including for its own Starlink internet company, according to executive statements. There are plans for NASA to hire the company to develop a Starship variant for an astronaut moon landing planned in the future. 

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Starship test flight number one ended after about four minutes due to the failure of SpaceX's flight-termination system, which destroyed the vehicle. In spite of the explosion that took place in the air, Mr. Musk stated before the flight that one of his biggest concerns was that the company's launchpad would be destroyed. 

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said Wednesday that debris spread from the launch portion of the flight was over 385 acres of SpaceX land and state land, according to the agency's statement. Additionally, the agency said that a fire began on 3.5 acres as a result of the explosion. Its pad is situated on a beach on the Gulf of Mexico, east of Brownsville, Texas, where the company has its office and production facility.

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In addition to overseeing the public beach adjacent to the SpaceX site as well as the lands that are part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, the Fish and Wildlife Service is also responsible for overseeing the refuge's lands.

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Staff members from Fish and Wildlife documented “numerous large concrete chunks, stainless steel sheets, metal and other objects thrown thousands of feet away as well as the plume cloud of pulverized concrete that deposited material up to 6.5 miles northwest of the pad site,” according to the agency.

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Even if SpaceX succeeds in repairing the pad and preparing another rocket for a second flight attempt within the next two months, it will still need permission to attempt a second flight from the Federal Aviation Administration before the company can try to fly again. The FAA, which regulates commercial-space launches, declined to comment on when the second attempt at flight might take place, according to a spokesman for the agency. 

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"Safety will dictate the timeline for the project," he said. It is possible for some mishap investigations to be completed within a few weeks, but more complex mishap investigations may take several months, the agency's spokesman says.

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Immediately after the launch on April 20, Mr. Musk said he expected to try to fly again within a few months, but he has since said that the company could be ready within one or two months. 

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The FAA's environmental assessment for the Starship project indicates that the Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp. has considered adding more infrastructure at the Texas site to enable it to handle launches, according to the FAA's environmental assessment of the project. 

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The founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, announced in a recent interview that the company has started work on adding a large, water-cooled steel plate underneath the mount for Starship that will be used to launch the spacecraft. Despite their best efforts, the company failed to complete this effort before the first launch, and erroneously believed the concrete material at the launch pad would survive the blastoff, he said.

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“The force of the engines throttling up might have been enough to shatter the concrete rather than just eroding it,” he said in a tweet when talking about the first Starship launch.