SpaceX should be able to fly its Starship again in about six weeks, company president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said March 20, according to media reports. The team is still reviewing data from the last flight, and the fourth test flight will not carry satellites.
SpaceX's third Starship launch last week did not fully succeed, but it still pushed the envelope and made history. The Starship successfully launched and ascended, re-entered the atmosphere and went into a blackout (lost contact with the ground).
Musk has said that SpaceX could land an uncrewed Starship on Mars in as soon as three to four years. Other accomplishments planned for the Starship, which SpaceX is developing as a huge, fully reusable launch vehicle and spacecraft, include a robotic Mars landing test by 2026, he said.
Musk has said he hopes Starship will eventually carry large amounts of cargo to Mars to build a self-sustaining "Mars city" there.
The ultimate goal is to build a fleet of 1,000 Starships that could carry as many as three launches per day and eventually transport as many as one million people to Mars.
Kelvin Coleman of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said he did not see any major issues with last week's Starship launch, but that SpaceX still needs to conduct a mishap investigation. He said that SpaceX is targeting six to nine more Starship launches this year.
