Elon Musk’s Mars plans thwarted as Starship grounded until November

‘We will never get humanity to Mars if this continues,’ billionaire says after FAA refuses to grant Starship launch license

The Starship spacecraft at SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on 13 March, 2024 (Getty Images)

Elon Musk’s hope of sending rockets to Mars in 2026 appears to be in doubt after regulators refused to grant a launch licence for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.

SpaceX has already conducted two orbital flight tests of Starship this year, with both ending in explosions as the craft attempted reentry. The next flight test aimed to catch the Super Heavy booster in mid-air using a “chopsticks” system at the launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.

SpaceX said that its Starship and Super Heavy rocket booster have been ready to launch since the first week of August, but have been unable to proceed due to a lack of approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

“We recently received a launch licence date estimate of late November from the FAA, the government agency responsible for licensing Starship flight tests,” an update posted to SpaceX’s website on Tuesday stated.

“This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September. This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but was instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis.”

The Independent has contacted the FAA for further information about the Starship test flight delay.

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Mr Musk said last Saturday that SpaceX was aiming to launch the first Starship missions to Mars when the next transfer window to the Red Planet opens in November 2026.

“These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in four years,” he wrote in a post to X.

“Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet.”

Following the latest delay, Mr Musk wrote: “We will never get humanity to Mars if this continues.”