- SpaceX has filed for a license to launch a prototype of its reusable Starship rocket.
- The filing requests permission from the Federal Communications Commission to launch the prototype nearly 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) into the air from SpaceX's rocket development facility in Boca Chica, Texas sometime between August and February.
- Elon Musk recently said that he still hopes to launch the first humans to Mars aboard a Starship rocket in mid-2024.
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SpaceX hopes to launch prototypes of its Starship rocket more than a dozen miles high within the next seven months, according to a recent filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Elon Musk, the aerospace company's founder and CEO, is urgently racing to develop Starship, a fully reusable rocket system that is designed to one day land on the moon for NASA and take up to 100 people at a time to Mars.
In early June, shortly after SpaceX successfully launched two astronauts to the International Space Station using a different rocket, Musk reportedly urged employees to shift their focus to Starship.
Aerial photos also show a frenzied increase in activity at the company's rocket development site in Boca Chica, Texas.
Now the company has filed a request to the FCC for permission to use certain radio frequencies while launching Starship prototypes up to 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) into the air. The filing, posted Thursday, specifies that launch operations would occur between August 18, 2020 and February 18, 2021.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on May 28 approved a suborbital launch license for Starship prototypes. However, SpaceX can't feasibly launch Starships until the FCC grants it permission to use frequencies required to track and communicate with the vehicles. Typically, the FCC is quick to grant such permission to SpaceX.
A full-scale 16-story Starship prototype has yet to fly, though a previous and shorter version of the rocket known as Starhopper successfully launched 500 feet high and landed.
Several early iterations of Starship prototypes failed and were obliterated during testing while the rockets were filled with inert liquid nitrogen. The most recent Starship prototype catastrophically exploded on May 29 after a static firing — the day before astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley rode the company's Crew Dragon spaceship to the ISS with the help of a different SpaceX rocket, Falcon 9. (That launcher successfully flew 85 missions before sending Behnken and Hurley into space.)
Musk has said the company may need to build about 20 large prototypes before SpaceX can attempt to launch one into orbit.
Musk confirmed on June 4 that he still hoped to launch the first crew to Mars in a Starship vehicle in mid-2024 — ostensibly as the start of an effort to populate the red planet.
This story has been updated.
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