Starship and Intuitive Machines Trying Again

Starship tries again for orbit, and Intuitive Machines is on its way back to the Moon. I'm Tom Patton, and here are some of the top stories from The Journal of Space Commerce this week.

SpaceX has updated its projection for the 8th Starship test flight to not earlier than Monday, March 3. The launch window will open at 5:30 p.m. CT.

The launch was originally planned for last Friday, but it was delayed for unspecified reasons. The upcoming flight will target objectives not reached on the previous test, including Starship’s first payload deployment of Starlink Simulators and multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the upper stage to the launch site for catch. The flight also includes the launch, return, and catch of the Super Heavy booster.

Extensive upgrades to Starship’s upper stage debuted on the previous flight test, focused on adding reliability and performance across all phases of flight. Starship’s forward flaps have been upgraded to significantly reduce their exposure to reentry heating while simplifying the underlying mechanisms and protective tiling. Redesigns to the propulsion system, including a 25 percent increase in propellant volume over previous generations, and additional vehicle performance and the ability to fly longer duration missions. And the vehicle’s avionics underwent a complete redesign, adding additional capability and redundancy for increasingly complex missions like propellant transfer and ship return to the launch site.

SpaceX has also released the results of its investigation following the anomaly on the previous test flight.

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There are two missions scheduled to land on the Moon this coming week.

Carrying NASA instruments as part of the NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative and Artemis campaign, Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission launched on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander is scheduled to touch down on Thursday, March 6, on a plateau in the Moon’s South Pole.

Once on the Moon, the NASA CLPS investigations will aim to measure the potential presence of volatiles or gases from lunar soil – one of the first on-site demonstrations of resource use on the Moon. In addition, a passive Laser Retroreflector Array on the top deck of the lander will bounce laser light back at any future orbiting or incoming spacecraft to give them a permanent reference point on the lunar surface. Other technology instruments on this delivery will demonstrate a robust surface communications system and deploy a propulsive drone designed to hop across the lunar surface.

NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft, which launched as a rideshare with the IM-2 mission, also began its journey to lunar orbit, where it will map the distribution of the different forms of water on the Moon.

Meanwhile, the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lander is slated to land on the lunar surface today. Firefly reported that all 10 NASA payloads have remained healthy as Blue Ghost approached its final destination, and continued to support science operations along the way.

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On the other side of this planet, the countdown is on for the first launch of Gilmour Space Technologies' Eris rocket. The company announced this week that the Eris launch window will open 'no earlier than' March 15 for the maiden flight of the first Australian-designed and built rocket aiming for orbit.

The news follows final airspace approvals from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) and Airservices Australia, clearing the last regulatory hurdle before launch. It