What’s next for SpaceX’s Starship after dramatic launch

The dust has settled in Texas, but work is already underway to clean up the world’s most powerful rocket and get the next one flying in a few months.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its full-stack Starship for the first time a little over a week ago. While the nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle flew for more than three minutes — achieving several milestones for a rocket of unprecedented size — Starship also lost multiple engines during launch, wreaking havoc on ground infrastructure, It ultimately failed to reach space after launch. The rocket began to roll and was deliberately destroyed in the air.

SpaceX “blew a hole in the launch pad,” as NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on Thursday.

The company hopes to launch another Starship rocket as soon as June or July, but that timeline depends on a variety of factors, including maintenance work, regulatory approvals and the readiness of the next prototype.

The biggest hurdle for the second launch attempt may be the arduous cleanup.

Shortly after launch, SpaceX began cleaning the pad and assessing damage to its infrastructure. Photos taken by bystanders showed the violent aftermath of the super-heavy booster engine, which dug a crater in the ground and threw debris at the launch tower, nearby tanks and other ground equipment.

“I’ve asked so I can report to you that as of today, SpaceX is still saying they think it will take at least two months to rebuild the launch pad and about two months to get their second vehicle Ready to launch,” NASA Chief Nielsen told lawmakers Thursday, providing an update on the company’s return flight schedule.

NASA has a vested interest in Starship’s success, as NASA has a nearly $3 billion contract with SpaceX in 2021 to send astronauts to the moon using rockets as part of the Artemis program.

SpaceX leadership stated many times before the launch that the first launch would be successful without blowing up the launch pad. But infrastructure is still taking a hit. In a series of tweets after the launch, Musk described extensive damage to the concrete launch pad the company built and said he hoped the rocket hadn’t severely damaged the brackets that support it before launch.

“The only thing left is the steel bars for the concrete lateral support beams!” Musk said.

The company’s chief executive added that SpaceX’s analysis was “premature,” but speculated that “the force of the engine’s acceleration may break the concrete rather than simply erode it.” During a brief test of the 33 Raptor engines on the site, Musk said “the engines only had half the thrust,” which avoided tearing a hole in the ground earlier.

A possible solution: Musk said SpaceX was “building a giant water-cooled steel plate to put under the launch pad.” He said the plate wasn’t “ready in time” on the first try, and acknowledged that the company was “wrong” grounds that “concrete can withstand a launch.

The Starship test flight has sparked scrutiny from the FAA, which is effectively the main federal regulator of SpaceX’s rocket program. As a criterion for launching “anomalies,” such as this mid-air explosion, the FAA opened an investigation into the flight and its aftermath.The move makes future Starship launches possible until it wraps up its investigation and gives SpaceX permission to move forward Regulators granted the company a license earlier this month.

The company had planned to launch its first Starship and Super Heavy booster flight as early as summer 2021, but the president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell recently said the maiden flight was delayed in part because the company was focused on developing “the production systems that will build the ship”. The company has steadily expanded its “Starbase” facility over the past few years.