Fermat's Library | Accelerating astrophysics with the SpaceX Starship annotated/explained version.

## TL;DR: In this paper, the authors highlight Starship's substant...

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is the region of space up to about 2,000 km a...

The Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point is a spot about 1.5 million km from...

Here's a [link to the Origins, Worlds, and Life Report](https://web...

Here’s a comparison of the size and mass-carrying capabilities of m...

This paper was written in February 2023, before the first Starship ...

SpaceX

Starship

Accelerating

astrophysics

with the

NURPHOTO SRL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

40 PHYSICS TODAY

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23 March 2025 16:31:24

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PHYSICS TODAY 41

To keep within the NASA astrophysics budget, however,

their launch dates have been pushed to the 2040s and 2050s, a

forbidding timeline. A newly minted PhD today will be barely

a decade from retirement by the time even the ﬁ rst of the ob-

servatories launches. The unwelcome implication is that there

likely will be a decade- scale gap in ﬂ agship capabilities at all

wavelengths in the 2030s to the detriment of science and of

NASA’s technological leadership.

Astro2020 took place against a rather static background of

space capabilities. Yet from late 2020, SpaceX has been devel-

oping an enormous and fully reusable launch system known

as Starship, which consists of the Starship upper stage and the

Super Heavy booster stage. The Super Heavy hasn’t ﬂ own yet,

although Starship underwent dramatic progress, from early

tests that resulted in multiple explosions— known tongue-

in- cheek as “rapid unscheduled disassemblies”—to a success-

ful high- altitude test ﬂ ight and soft landing by mid 2021. Stud-

ies of the largest ﬂ agship missions that NASA commissioned

took three years and were completed by 2019. The unfortunate

timing meant that the capabilities of Starship could be only

brieﬂ y considered in the Astro2020 deliberations.

Assuming it is successful, Starship will dramatically en-

hance our space capabilities in ways that will qualitatively alter

how astrophysics missions can be built. The capabilities for

planetary science missions in our solar system are discussed

in the Origins, Worlds, and Life report, which emphasizes that

Starship can accelerate the NASA planetary program.

This

paper discusses the parallel opportunities for astrophysics.

Mass, size, and cost

Astrophysics missions to space have always been tightly con-

strained by the capabilities of the launchers, which have not

changed substantially in two decades. The three changes that

Starship would bring are a much larger mass to orbit, much wider

cargo bays, and no increase in— and potentially lowering— the

cost per launch.

For decades the maximum mass brought to low Earth orbit

has been around 10–25 metric tons (t). The Starship Users Guide

says that the spacecraft will be capable of carrying about 100 t

to low Earth orbit, which is 4–10 times more than other launch-

ers (see ﬁ gure 2). Starship will be able to put 21 t into geostation-

ary transfer orbit and about 18 t into a Sun– Earth L2 Lagrange

point orbit, a favored location for many classes of astrophysics

missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Re-

fueling in orbit is required for NASA’s lunar Starship Human

Landing System.

It could transport 100 t observatories to the Moon,

to the L2 orbit, or almost anywhere in the solar system.

Space observatories are deployed from the cargo bay of the

upper stage, known as the payload fairing, of their respective

launchers. They then ﬂ y independently for their operational

lives, typically years to decades. All heavy- lift vehicles launched

this century have had inner fairing diameters of 4–5 m. Starship

Martin Elvis is a senior astrophysicist at the Center for

Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge,

Massachusetts. Charles Lawrence is the chief scientist

for astronomy and physics at NASA’s Jet Propulsion

Laboratory in La Cañada, California. Sara Seager is a

physics professor at MIT in Cambridge.

By substantially increasing the mass and volume of its reusable

transportation system without raising costs, SpaceX may enable

NASA to implement future missions years ahead of schedule.

Martin Elvis, Charles Lawrence, and Sara Seager

rom 2019 to 2021, the US astronomy community was engaged in a planning

exercise for the coming decade and beyond. The result of that eﬀ ort is the

decadal survey Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the

2020s. Commonly known as Astro2020, it envisages an ambitious set of new

“Great Observatories” as the community’s top priority.

(Each of the authors

is closely associated with one of the observatories endorsed by Astro2020.) The new Great

Observatories, some of which are shown in ﬁ gure 1, would collect measurements that

span the electromagnetic spectrum, from far- IR to x rays, with orders- of- magnitude gain

in capabilities over their renowned predecessors— the Spi er Space Telescope, the Hubble

Space Telescope, the Compton Gamma- Ray Observatory, and the Chandra X- Ray Observatory.

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23 March 2025 16:31:24

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SPACEX STARSHIP

will double that diameter to 8 m and marginally

increase the typical payload height, as shown in

ﬁ gure 3.

Most launchers cost more than $100 million

to design and build. Exceptions are the Proton- M

and Falcon 9 vehicles, which cost about $60 million,

but the production of Proton- M vehicles ended

in 2022. The goal for Starship is to be cheaper

than the Falcon 9 rocket.

But even a launcher

with zero costs would not be transformative

without the large increases in payload mass and

volume that Starship is designed to provide. A

$60 million launch cost for NASA’s Medium- Class

Explorer missions, for example, is 20% of the mis-

sion’s $300 million budget.

Revolution in mission design

Mass and volume have dominated space mission

design, but Starship would reduce mass to a sec-

ondary design factor. That approach will simplify

decisions and reduce the number of design cycles that must be

completed before arriving at a workable solution. Spacecraft

have traditionally demanded strict performance margins to

save mass. But with looser mass requirements, mission designs

can use simpler, heavier components and less exotic materials

and incorporate more robust engineering margins. According

to the Origins, Worlds, and Life report,

Starships can accommodate payloads that are sig-

niﬁ cantly larger and heavier than traditional NASA

planetary payloads, signiﬁ cantly reducing the need

for the costly reductions in size and mass required for

traditional NASA payloads. Starships can ﬂ y multi-

ple payloads and instruments on individual ﬂ ights to

reduce overall risk, and signiﬁ cantly more power can

be available for the payload. (reference 2, page 540)

During the design phase of NASA’s modest- sized Spectro-

Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization,

and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx), for example, engineers used the

mass available on the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle to help

solve problems and contain costs. Allen Farrington, the project

manager of SPHEREx at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

told the three of us that “the approach that SPHEREx has taken

from proposal through the critical design review is to convert

risk to mass. A key example was the Sun– Earth shade, where

we swapped out technically challenging, state- of- the- art, soft-

goods- based technology for more massive but state- of- practice

aluminum honeycomb panels. This resulted in a much lower

risk posture and was enabled by the excess mass capabilities

of our Falcon 9 launch vehicle.”

The JWST exempliﬁ es the diﬃ culties caused by tight size

and mass constraints. The Ariane 5 launch vehicle constrained

the total payload mass to 6.2 t. The JWST primary mirrors, in-

cluding their support structure, are ⅙ of the total mission mass.

That’s similar to the Hubble mirror but with nearly six times the

area. A Hubble- style mirror for the JWST would have had a

mass of almost 5 t, or ¾ of the total available payload.

The limitations of the launcher capabilities forced project

scientists to develop novel, lightweight, high stiﬀ ness- to- mass

technologies. Their choice of beryllium for the mirror material

was driven in part by the need for high conductivity to mini-

mize thermal gradients at the 20–55 K operating temperatures

of the JWST.

The need to deploy a large, thin sunshield had

other consequences, including reducing slew rates and length-

ening se ling times, both of which have reduced the amount

of scientiﬁ c work that can be done each day.

Even though the JWST successfully deployed, vindicating

the technical approach, the complexity of the design required

extensive planning and testing that added to the cost and length-

ened the project’s schedule. With Starship’s large fairing diam-

eter and volume, the 6.5 m JWST primary mirror could have been

made of a single component with a mass per square meter sim-

ilar to Hubble. At 5 t, the JWST would still have been only 10%

of the mass deliverable to the Sun– Earth L2 orbit and, therefore,

not a dominant design consideration. A single mirror avoids

the complexity of aligning the 18 hexagonal mirror segments.

Not all such origami deployments would be avoided by using

Starship; the JWST sunshield is still larger than Starship’s pro-

posed fairing size.

Although ambitious, reducing total mission cost by a factor

of two is the crucial threshold for cost savings. The same budget

can then fund twice as many missions, which would be transfor-

mative for the new Great Observatories program by potentially

allowing for missions slated for the 2040s to happen in the 2030s.

When a set of Great Observatories is operating contemporane-

ously, the pace of discoveries is accelerated because ﬁ ndings

by one observatory often lead to new investigations by others.

Gains for all bands

Astronomy observations now are collected across more than

10 decades of frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum, from

FIGURE 1. NASA is planning the development of new Great

Observatories. Shown here are early design concepts: (a) the LUVOIR

observatory, (b) Origins Space Telescope, (c) and the Lynx X-Ray

Observatory. Whatever form the  nal instruments take, they will be sent

to collect measurements across the electromagnetic spectrum and

answer the biggest open questions in astronomy and space science.

The SpaceX Starship launch vehicle could bring those observatories

to space before the middle of the century. (Courtesy of NASA/GSFC.)

23 March 2025 16:31:24

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PHYSICS TODAY 43

Hz in the radio band to

more than 10

Hz in x rays.

The ways in which missions

could beneﬁ t from Starship’s

capabilities depend on the

band. The missions proposed

in Astro2020 white papers can

serve as a guide. Together the

missions cover virtually every

band of the electromagnetic

spectrum along with alterna-

tive messengers such as cosmic

rays and neutrinos.

For the traditional radio band

at centimeter wavelengths, the

obvious next step is extending

very long baseline interfer-

ometry to longer baselines

than Earth’s diameter. That

will let researchers obtain

higher angular resolution and

faster and denser uv- plane

coverage, which allows for

concomitant high- dynamic-

range imaging. The Russian S p e k t r - R and Japanese Haruka

missions, with modest payloads of 1–2 t, demonstrated tech-

nical feasibility and the existence of radio sources for study.

Both missions produced limited results because of their mod-

erate dish sizes of 8–10 m and their single Earth- to- space

baselines.

Starship could, in a single launch, deploy multiple antennae

up to 30 m in diameter using a mechanism similar to the un-

folding of an umbrella. The millimeter- wavelength tolerances

of the antennae would allow for the detection of various celes-

tial objects. The gain in uv- plane coverage from multiple an-

tennae scales with the number of baselines N

BASELINES

, which

increases rapidly with the number of antennae n: N

BASELINES

n(n − 1)/2. Although launch costs are unimportant with Starship,

simultaneously launching an entire array could shorten project

construction times and save costs.

Radio astronomy at frequencies of less than 30 MHz and

wavelengths greater than 10 m could give access to the “dark

ages,” the time before the ﬁ rst stars formed, by using the cos-

mological signature from neutral hydrogen.

That approach is

infeasible from Earth because of ionospheric blocking and the

high human- created radio background. The lunar far side may

be the only site in our solar system from which that cosmolog-

ical signal is detectable because the Moon provides 90 dB sup-

pression of Earth- based interference.

It is possible, though, that

galactic synchrotron emission will prove to be an insurmount-

able source of noise. The Starship could deliver 100 t to any

lunar location, so it would be able to transport a telescope, and

a crew could, if necessary, reconﬁ gure it before they deploy it.

Perhaps the most famous recent result at millimeter to sub-

millimeter wavelengths is the 2019 image of the shadow of the

supermassive black hole in the galaxy Messier 87; it came from

the Event Horizon Telescope, which is based on very long base-

line interferometry. The image made headlines around the

world, as did the 2022 image of Sagi arius A* in the Milky Way.

Theory predicts ﬁ ne structure in the image, but that can’t be

conﬁ rmed with the 10 000 km baselines and limited frequency

coverage accessible on Earth.

Longer baselines are possible from high orbits, although

multiple antennae will be needed to give adequate uv- plane

coverage. The higher angular resolution could reveal the phys-

ics at work in accelerating jets to near light speed and could

increase the number of black hole shadows resolved from two

to at least dozens.

Really long baselines of greater than 300 000 km, made pos-

sible with the use of satellites in geostationary orbit or telescopes

on the Moon, would allow a clean separation of the eﬀ ects of

general relativity from those of the astrophysical, even with a

single baseline.

Optical laser- communication technology has

now reached a point at which data can be transferred at a high

rate from low Earth orbit, and it should be demonstrated soon

on longer- baseline telescopes.

Dishes for submillimeter astronomy must be designed to

tolerances of tens of microns, a constraint that makes deployed

optics less appealing and increased mass more appealing.

Starship could deploy a stack of several monolithic 6- m- class

dishes to geostationary orbit in a single launch to help lower

costs and accelerate the schedule. Another Starship could put

a submillimeter telescope anywhere on the Moon.

For the far- IR region of the spectrum, the Origins Space Tele-

scope is a ﬂ agship concept that has been studied by NASA. It

was conceived as a 5.9- m- diameter primary mirror cooled to

FIGURE 2. MISSIONS TO SPACE have historically been constrained

by launch vehicles and the limited mass they are capable of bringing

to orbit. The upcoming Starship vehicle, developed by SpaceX,

could o er new opportunities by carrying more mass to low Earth

orbit at a lower cost compared with the competition. (Graph by

Freddie Pagani. Data are from the following: Ariane 5, Arianespace;

Proton– M, International Launch Services; Atlas V and Delta IV,

United Launch Alliance; H- IIB, JAXA; SLS Block 1B, NASA; and

Falcon 9 and Starship, SpaceX.)

MASS TO LOW EARTH ORBIT

(

tons

)

0 20

100 120

COST OF LAUNCH (millions $)

600

500

400

300

200

100

Delta IV

Ariane 5

Proton-M

Falcon 9

Starship

SLS Block 1B

Atlas V

H-IIB

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SPACEX STARSHIP

just 4.5 K to have low thermal background noise across the

whole 25–588 micron band. Origins would have much more

sensitivity and spectral resolution than its predecessor mis-

sions, the Herschel Space Observatory and Spi er. Early designs

for Origins had already planned on utilizing one of three con-

ceptions: the larger- diameter fairings, then known as the Big

Falcon rocket, from Starship; NASA’s Space Launch System

(SLS); or Blue Origin’s planned New Glenn launcher.

The Origins concept study did not exploit the mass capabil-

ity of Starship and SLS. Origins has a mass of only 13 t, even if

all the contingencies and reserves are included.

Like all far- IR

observatories, Origins requires an orbit similar to the Sun– Earth

L2 point: Such an orbit is far enough away from Earth so that

its heat doesn’t interfere with data collection. Even for a non-

refueled Starship, Origins could carry four times as much mass.

That decision could lead to cost- saving opportunities from,

for example, simplifying the choice of material for the primary

mirror.

To support near- IR, optical, and UV astronomy, NASA con-

ceptualized the Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, and

LUVOIR missions for the Astro2020 survey.

Those considered

projects span a wide range of possible mirror diameters, from

2.4 m to 15 m. The most demanding science goal of each con-

cept mission is to directly image exo- Earths— the Earth- like

planets in the habitable zones of the stars they orbit— and to

then measure the spectrum of their atmospheres in a search for

biosignatures or other signs of life. However, the stars are so

much brighter than the exo- Earths orbiting them that a demand-

ing contrast ratio of 10

−10

is needed. To balance cost against the

number of exo- Earths expected to be accessible, Astro2020 in-

stead recommended an unnamed mission that would use a 6 m

primary mirror, which is a compromise between HabEx and

LUVOIR. The unnamed mission has an anticipated launch date

of 2045, primarily because of its $11 billion cost estimate.

A 6 m primary mirror could be carried by Starship to orbit,

and it could have Hubble- like mass per unit area, or even greater,

without causing problems for the designers. The larger avail-

able mass that could be brought to space by Starship oﬀ ers

novel design possibilities for the new missions anticipated by

Astro2020. Astronomers and engineers will need to explore var-

ious designs to determine whether such missions can be built

at lower costs.

For x- ray observations, the Lynx x- ray ﬂ agship concept stud-

ied by NASA, in preparation for Astro2020, was conceived as

being hundreds of times more capable of imaging and high-

resolution spectroscopy than Chandra’s 1. 2- m- di am et er m ir r or.

The x- ray mirror of Lynx is 3 m in diameter with a subarcsec-

ond angular resolution and features grazing- incidence optics,

which reﬂ ect x rays at shallow angles. The mirror assembly

constitutes 25% of Lynx’s mass, taking up 2 t of the envisaged

7.7 t total. To keep the mirror mass from exceeding the pre-

Starship available payload, the Lynx scientists opted for thin,

0.5 mm mirror segments for its grazing- incidence optics.

Starship would allow an x- ray mirror made of thicker, 2 mm

segments. Since stiﬀ ness varies with thickness cubed, the mir-

ror segments would be 60 times as stiﬀ .

A aining the subarcsecond image quality at the heart of the

Lynx mission would then be much more easily accomplished.

A simpler ﬁ xturing and alignment system that could be more

rapidly assembled would likely lead to cost savings. As on

other missions, the freeing of the mass constraint may lead to

a lower- cost payload and spacecraft. The resulting 8 t mirror

assembly is readily accommodated by Starship.

Outside of the new Great Observatories, there is a host of

novel ideas for more modest-scale instruments. The Probe of

Extreme Multi- Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) mission,

for

example, would use a pair of 4 m Schmidt telescopes pointing

down from orbit to image extensive air showers (EASs) in ste-

reo using ﬂ uorescence and Cherenkov ﬂ ashes. EASs are created

by both ultra- high- energy cosmic rays and neutrinos in Earth’s

atmosphere. POEMMA images such cosmic rays when it is

nadir- pointing and neutrinos as upward- moving EASs when

it is limb- pointing. The large atmospheric volume probed from

orbit gives POEMMA a 10- to 100- fold performance gain over

state- of- the- art telescopes.

The low cost of Starship would allow for the launch of two

POEMMA telescopes separately, and the launch vehicle’s large

volume would remove the need for deployment mechanisms.

An improvement of up to a factor of three in the collecting area

could be gained by using the wide Starship fairing to launch

FIGURE 3. SPACEX’S STARSHIP would rede ne launcher capabilities

by o ering twice- as- wide payload fairings, which would allow for more

massive and less complex instrumentation to be brought to space.

Starship’s launcher length of 17.24 m is a bit more accommodating

than the industry’s more typical launcher lengths of 15–16 m.

(Courtesy of SpaceX.)

STARSHIP DIAMETER (m)

RADII (m)

1.80

2.20

2.51

2.78

3.04

3.27

3.49

3.68

3.85

8.00

23 March 2025 16:31:24

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PHYSICS TODAY 45

larger, 6–7 m telescopes, although the cost of manufacturing

the necessary 6 m Schmidt corrector lenses may preclude that

option.

POEMMA is just one of the many probe- class mission con-

cepts submi ed in white papers for Astro2020. The $1.5 billion

cost for probes estimated by Astro2020 means that only one per

decade is aﬀ ordable for the NASA astrophysics budget.

Starship may enable cheaper probes so that more, and more

unconventional ones such as POEMMA, can be developed.

Cheaper, faster, but beware of better

The space- science community can accelerate the Astro2020

program by taking advantage of Starship’s potential for cost

savings, but that approach will require discipline from all in-

volved. “Faster, be er, cheaper” was the mantra of Daniel

Goldin, the NASA administrator from 1992 to 2001, and it led

to, at best, mixed results.

Starship seems poised to provide faster and cheaper launch

vehicles. The teams proposing missions will always want to

put all the available mass budget, however large, into bigger

mirrors and more instruments. That line of thinking leads, in

many cases, to large and complex designs that will follow the

expensive scaling of cost with mass that the astronomy com-

munity is used to. Pushing for “be er” could jeopardize the

faster and cheaper goals, so the community will need to de-

velop best practices to restrain scientists’ appetite.

Space agencies will need to monitor for and avoid mission

creep, but doing so will not be easy. Industry and agency mod-

els that predict mission cost often scale cost with mass. Starship

could usher in a new paradigm in which increased mass would

decrease cost. But that won’t be an easy exercise. Because there

is no track record showing whether an approach that uses mass

and volume to cut costs will be successful, that approach trans-

lates initially into higher risk.

Starship caveats

Starship may not reach expectations. It may operate, but at a

much higher cost and at a reduced mass capability, or on- orbit

refueling may not be achieved. The Starship launch costs given

by SpaceX are presumably estimates of the cost to SpaceX, not

the price to a customer, which will be more expensive. Perhaps

most importantly, realizing dramatically lower launch costs de-

pends on rapid and frequent reuse of each Starship, but a mar-

ket for suﬃ cient launches may not be forthcoming. The antic-

ipated savings promised by Starship also may prove illusory

after careful inspection.

Similar risks, however, apply to almost any new technolog-

ical development. They are thus insuﬃ cient reasons to not con-

sider what might have the biggest eﬀ ect on astrophysics if the

Starship technology is a success.

The NASA- developed SLS has comparable capabilities to

Starship in terms of mass to low Earth orbit and payload volume.

As such, it provides some backup for Starship. The $800 million

to $2.7 billion cost estimate of an SLS launch, however, would

be a major factor in any mission of even a $5 billion Great

Observatory.

Launch costs of that magnitude may put such

an astrophysics mission out of contention, unless politically

mandated. The SLS is fully expendable, so the rate of produc-

tion of more launchers is a critical consideration. The produc-

tion rate for Boeing, the lead contractor for the SLS, is limited

to at most two SLS launchers per year.

NASA’s Artemis

human spaceﬂ ight program is expected to take most of the

SLS launch slots over the next several years.

Could three

launches over the next decade or so be available for the new

Great Observatories?

Even if Starship works as advertised, extra mass is not with-

out disadvantages. More mass increases the moment of inertia

of the spacecraft and so requires more massive reaction wheels

to point to a target. In addition, station keeping in the popular

Sun– Earth L2 halo orbits either will require proportionately

more propellant or will limit mission lifetimes because of the

extra mass.

Starship will likely be proven or not within the next ﬁ ve

years. That gives NASA time to prepare for a new era of launch

capability by the Astro2020 midterm review. A series of coor-

dinated studies over the next few years to investigate in detail

how Starship might accomplish, accelerate, and expand the

Astro2020 program would prepare NASA’s astrophysics pro-

gram to act if Starship succeeds. But even if Starship fails, the

eﬀ ort that is lost by planning for its success is small when

compared with the potential gains to astronomy.

The authors thank Lee Armus, Jack Burns, Allen Farrington, Tom

Megeath, Joe Silk, and Alexey Vikhlinin for valuable conversations.

The cost information contained in this article is of a budgetary and

planning nature and is intended for informational purposes only. It

does not constitute a commitment on the part of the Jet Propulsion

Laboratory and Caltech.

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23 March 2025 16:31:24

Discussion

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is the region of space up to about 2,000 km above Earth. It's much closer than higher orbits like Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) or Geostationary Orbit (GEO). This proximity makes LEO important because it requires less energy to reach, allows for quicker communication times, easier resupply missions, and faster returns to Earth - all crucial for satellites, the ISS, and future missions preparing for deep space exploration. ![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:4800/format:webp/1*I4wcEkxlozAhm7JtoRG_AQ.png) Here’s a comparison of the size and mass-carrying capabilities of multiple rockets over time: ![](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:4800/format:webp/0*drbTv7W4uDC6BNLB.png) The Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point is a spot about 1.5 million km from Earth where the gravitational pulls of the Earth and Sun balance perfectly with the orbital motion of a spacecraft. It’s favored for astrophysics missions because: - It offers a stable, low-fuel location for spacecraft to "hover" - It keeps the Sun, Earth, and Moon all on the same side, making it easier to shield telescopes from light and heat. - It provides a clear, uninterrupted view of deep space, ideal for sensitive observations (like the James Webb Space Telescope). ![](https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01HV71YQ7BT2YQRCZ3B383AHCJ.png) Here's a [link to the Origins, Worlds, and Life Report](https://web.gps.caltech.edu/classes/ge103/Readings/OriginsWorldsLife_DecadalSurvey2023-2032_pub26522_downloaded31march2023.pdf) This paper was written in February 2023, before the first Starship launch. Since then: #### Starship Launch Timeline (2023–2025) #### 1. Flight 1 – April 20, 2023 - **Booster:** B7 (Block 1) - **Ship:** S24 (Block 1) - **Outcome:** Failed separation; vehicle destroyed mid-air. Significant launch pad damage. #### 2. Flight 2 – November 18, 2023 - **Booster:** B9 - **Ship:** S25 - **Outcome:** Reached space; both stages lost due to booster explosion and upper-stage fire. #### 3. Flight 3 – March 14, 2024 - **Booster:** B10 - **Ship:** S28 - **Outcome:** Achieved full-duration second-stage burn; lost control during reentry; disintegrated before splashdown. #### 4. Flight 4 – June 6, 2024 - **Booster:** B11 - **Ship:** S29 - **Outcome:** Both stages achieved controlled ocean landings; first flight without in-flight explosions. #### 5. Flight 5 – October 13, 2024 - **Booster:** B12 - **Ship:** S30 - **Outcome:** First successful booster catch by launch tower arms; ship completed controlled splashdown. #### 6. Flight 6 – November 19, 2024 - **Booster:** B13 - **Ship:** S31 - **Outcome:** Booster landed in Gulf due to tower issue; ship completed first in-space engine relight and daylight splashdown. #### 7. Flight 7 – January 16, 2025 - **Booster:** B14 - **Ship:** S33 (Block 2 debut) - **Outcome:** Booster successfully caught; ship exploded mid-flight due to harmonic vibration issues. #### 8. Flight 8 – March 6, 2025 - **Booster:** B15 - **Ship:** S34 - **Outcome:** Booster caught again; ship lost due to premature engine shutdowns and loss of control. ## TL;DR: In this paper, the authors highlight Starship's substantial payload capacity (+100t) and cost-effective launch model, could allow NASA to deploy next-generation space telescopes much sooner than the 2040s–2050s timelines currently envisioned. The 2020 decadal survey (Astro2020) lays out ambitious plans for new "Great Observatories" like LUVOIR, the Origins Space Telescope, and the Lynx X-Ray Observatory—missions designed to surpass the capabilities of Hubble and Chandra. However, constrained budgets mean these missions risk launching decades from now, creating a serious gap in our flagship observatory capacity during the 2030s. Here’s where Starship could be a game-changer: - Its massive payload bay could fit larger, heavier telescopes without the need for intricate (and risky) folding designs. - Simplifying deployment could dramatically cut engineering cycles and costs - More affordable, scalable materials (like glass mirrors instead of beryllium) could become viable for next-gen space observatories. The authors call on NASA and the astrophysics community to actively plan around Starship’s capabilities. Doing so could fast-track the next wave of discoveries, ensuring that the 2030s don't become a lost decade for space science.

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