SpaceX’s Starship Flight 7 Planned For January Suggests NASA Letter To The FAA

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SpaceX’s next Starship flight, Flight 7, could take place in January, according to a request filed by NASA with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Starship Flight 6 took to the skies last week amid much fanfare, and it marked the quickest turnaround time for the world’s largest rocket under development. During the test, while SpaceX chose to skip the 232-feet-tall Super Heavy booster tower catch, the firm successfully landed the booster and the upper-stage spacecraft in the water. Now, according to a NASA request making rounds on X, Starship Flight 7 could fly on January 11th.

NASA Requests FAA Authorization To Deploy Aircraft To Study Second Stage Starship Spacecraft During Flight 7

NASA typically carries out imaging operations of SpaceX’s Starship rocket through its WB-57 aircraft, which are equipped with specialized gadgets and designed solely for such operations. However, since the upper-stage Starship spacecraft is set to splash down in the Indian Ocean, it’s likely that the WB-57’s flight range is unsuitable for the mission or that the cost of operating the aircraft from Australia is unfeasible for the space agency.

As a result, in a letter sent to the FAA, NASA has asked the regulator to allow it to operate a Gulfstream aircraft with all lights shut off in Texas to prepare for imaging operations for Starship Flight 7. The aircraft, called NASA5, will be used for “imaging calibration flights in support of the SpaceX Starship 7 launch,” according to NASA’s chief of flight operations, Air Operations Division, Brett Pugsley.

In his request to the FAA, Pugsley asks the agency to allow NASA to “conduct lightless operations in United States domestic airspace.” These flights will occur “over the Gulf of Mexico and Southwest Texas beginning as soon as December 7th, 2024” to allow NASA to calibrate onboard instruments for imaging the upper-stage Starship spacecraft.

NASA will use sensors on the NASA5 to study Starship second stage’s peak reentry heating, and the agency needs “to reduce all exterior and interior lighting to a minimum to calibrate” them for Flight 7. The calibration will take place in the US, and the agency will shut off the aircraft’s internal and external lights for one hour.

Once the calibration is complete, NASA plans to fly out to Australia on January 3rd. This will be a week before the tentative Starship Flight 7 date, which is currently scheduled for January 11th, according to a copy of the letter seen by Wccftech. During Flight 7, the “NASA5 will image the reentry and peak-heating events of the Starship vehicle approximately one hour after launch, as it comes over the horizon and splashes down in the eastern Indian Ocean,” according to the space agency.

The Starship program is critical to NASA’s efforts to establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon under the Artemis program. SpaceX is NASA’s prime contract for the Human Landing System (HLS) lander which aims to land the first humans on the Moon since the Apollo program. The HLS is a custom variant of the upper stage Starship spacecraft, which does not have a heat shield since the ship is not designed to be brought back to Earth.

SpaceX’s upper-stage Starship heat shield is one of the largest of its kind ever built, and it is integral to the rocket’s rapid reusability. If the firm can successfully splash down the second stage in the Indian Ocean with Flight 7, then, according to Elon Musk, it will attempt to catch the rocket with the tower on the next flight.