Elon Musk said yesterday that the Starship developed by his company SpaceX and selected by NASA for the Americans’ return to the Moon would attempt its first orbital flight early next year.
“We’ll do a bunch of tests in December and hopefully launch in January,” Musk said in a talk for the National Academies Space Studies Board.
“There’s a lot of risk associated with this first launch,” he said. “So I would not say that it is likely to be successful, but I think we will make a lot of progress.”
Starship has already made several sub-orbital flights. After multiple tests that ended in impressive explosions, SpaceX finally succeeded in landing the spacecraft, which is designed to be reusable.