Update June 23, 10:01 a.m. EDT (1401 UTC): SpaceX confirms deployment of the Starfall capsule.
As the sun rose over Florida’s Space Coast on Tuesday, so too did SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, carrying onboard a demonstration of its new uncrewed reentry capsule named ‘Starfall’.
The company had been tight-lipped about the payload and its mission profile, cutting off its public-facing, post-liftoff timeline after the booster landing event. SpaceX chose not to share views of its upper stage or the Starfall payload itself during its broadcast.
SpaceX also has not disclosed how many spacecraft are onboard this mission. An environmental assessment (EA) published by the Federal Aviation Administration said in May that the company wanted to “perform two Starfall reentries to demonstrate capabilities for future transport and delivery of goods through space,” but it’s not clear if this mission will include more than one Starfall capsule.
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 happened at 6:53 a.m. EDT (1053 UTC).
The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 95 percent chance for favorable weather on Tuesday. Meteorologists said there was a small chance for interference from cumulus clouds.
SpaceX launched the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster B1078. This was its 29th flight after launching previous missions that included NASA’s Crew-6, USSF-124, and SES’ O3b mPOWER-B.
Nearly nine minutes after liftoff, B1078 landed on the drone ship ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ positioned out in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the 157th landing on this vessel and the 628th booster landing for SpaceX to date.
New technologies, new mysteries
The introduction of Starfall into SpaceX’s lineup of spacecraft continues the naming pattern for the objects that the company launches into orbit, i.e. Starlink, Starshield, and eventually Starship. But like Starshield, SpaceX hasn’t said much of anything about this new reentry capability.
The final EA, published in May, stated that SpaceX wanted to either launch Starfall into low Earth orbit or on a suborbital trajectory. The capsules can be launched either on a Falcon 9 rocket or a Starship-Super Heavy flight.
As part of its initial public offering roadshow presentation, SpaceX included a graphic that seems to show a type of satellite bus that’s has slots for up to four Starfall capsules. It includes the label, “In-orbit manufacturing.”
The FAA-published EA stated that each Starfall capsule “is a cylindrical shaped capsule approximately 0.75 meters (2.5 feet) tall with a diameter of 3.1 meters (10.2 feet), weighing approximately 2,100 kilograms (4,600 pounds), and capable of carrying 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of payload, for a total weight of 3,100 kilograms (6,800 pounds).”
It noted that these capsules will be recovered in the Pacific Ocean, similar to Dragon spacecraft.
SpaceX hasn’t indicated how long the Starfall capsule will remain in orbit or if it’s hosting any customer payloads onboard. There are some notable ambitions for the technology as laid out in the EA document.
“The purpose of the Proposed Action is to (1) enable point-to-point delivery of critical cargo through space on rapid timelines and (2) create a self-sustaining commercial in-space manufacturing market by offering access to microgravity and vacuum, loiter on orbit, and safe return from orbit as a service at scale,” the document stated. “This aligns with national objectives to expand commercial activity in LEO.
“For example, Starfall can serve as a proliferated successor to the International Space Station (ISS), taking the ISS’s successful manufacturing experiments and scaling them to a self-sustaining manufacturing economy in space. The Proposed Action is needed to advance novel space capabilities by maturing commercial technology.”
The document stated that while Starfall capsules don’t contain a main propulsion system, they do have an attitude control system that uses inert gas to correctly orient the spacecraft. This means that the spacecraft can only change their attitude, but not perform a de-orbit burn.
The Starfall capsules are made up of two primary pieces, a top plate and a heat shield, that separate after reentry. The FAA document describes the top plate as an “ aluminum structure partially wrapped in thermal protection material and weighs approximately 1,400 kilograms (kg).”
“The heat shield consists of a carbon fiber structure wrapped in thermal protective material and containing two large, compressed nitrogen gas-filled composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) (151 liters each) and several smaller auxiliary compressed gas bottles (9 liters each). The heat shield weighs approximately 700 kg total.”
Following reentry, the top plate separates to reveal the parachute, which is connected to “four reinforced attachment points on the vehicle.” There are three parachutes in total, a drogue, a pilot, and main landing parachutes.
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