SpaceX pivoted to a larger Falcon 9 rocket
in 2010, and began to deliver cargo to the
ISS for NASA 2 years later. Since then, its
ambitions have grown. “A lot of other space
companies are trying to win contracts,” says
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astro-
physics (CfA). “SpaceX is trying to get to
Mars. It turns out that having a goal can be
economically successful.”
The upcoming crewed flight could displace
the Russian rockets NASA has hired—at a
hefty price—to carry humans to the ISS since
- Cheaper, more frequent flights could
improve the biomedical and physical science
experiments aboard the station, says indus-
try analyst Laura Forczyk, owner of the space
consulting firm Astralytical. “More people
equals more research,” she says.
SpaceX has boosted NASA science in
other ways, delivering the climate-observing
Jason-3 satellite and the planet-seeking Tran-
siting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to orbit. In
2022, it is set to launch the Psyche mission to
a metallic asteroid, in the first NASA
launch of a Falcon Heavy, which sits
between the Falcon 9 and Starship
in its propulsive power (Science,
26 January 2018, p. 376).
But it’s the company’s upcoming
Starship that has designers of sci-
ence missions salivating. SpaceX
has not announced a date for an
inaugural flight, but has built six
prototypes at a pace of nearly one
per month. (Three have been acci-
dentally destroyed in testing.) The
steel alloy capsule and its super-
heavy booster stand 120 meters
tall, towering over the Saturn V that
carried people to the Moon. Last
year, Musk said full reusability and
thrifty use of propellant would drop
the cost of each Starship launch to $2 mil-
lion. Todd suggests $10 million per flight
might be more realistic.
The rocket’s 9-meter-diameter cargo hold
could easily accommodate giant celestial
observatories, such as the proposed Habit-
able Exoplanet Observatory, which would
directly image distant planets. One reason
for the endless delays afflicting the James
Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the
Hubble Space Telescope, has been the need
to fold up its segmented 6.5-meter mirror to
fit aboard a European Ariane 5 rocket, says
CfA astrophysicist Martin Elvis.
A viable Starship could also create politi-
cal pressure to scupper the Space Launch
System (SLS), the NASA-developed heavy-lift
rocket that is supposed to power the agency
back to the Moon and on to Mars at a whop-
ping $900 million per launch—if it ever
launches. Its debut has repeatedly slipped,
and is now expected at the end of 2021. Just
1 or 2 years later, it is supposed to carry as-
tronauts to lunar orbit, but McDowell doubtsit will remain in production for very
long. “If Starship works, that’s the
death knell for SLS,” he says.
SpaceX, along with private com-
panies Blue Origin and Dynetics,
was chosen in April to design lunar
landers for astronauts and sup-
plies. SpaceX put forth the Starship
capsule as its lander, which could
launch atop its own booster or a
NASA-built one. There would be
plenty of room for scientists to piggy-
back experiments, such as a radio
telescope to peer back to the earli-
est era of galaxy formation from the
Moon’s far side, says Steve Clarke,
NASA’s deputy associate adminis-
trator for scientific exploration.
Yet SpaceX’s haste to go big could
also cause trouble for scientists. The
Starship lander will be much heavier
than the spindly lunar module of the Apollo
missions. The dust and rocks it kicks up could
rise into lunar orbit, creating an interfering
haze for other landers and threatening satel-
lites and outposts, Elvis says. The company’s
long-standing goal to colonize Mars has the
potential to contaminate the planet with
terrestrial microbes that could confound re-
searchers, he adds. SpaceX did not respond
to requests for comment for this article.
In recent months, the company has aroused
the ire of astronomers with the launch of
hundreds of Starlink satellites, which are
intended to deliver high-speed internet to
remote areas. From the ground, the satellites
appear surprisingly bright because of their
low orbits, and they have left disruptive trails
on the cameras of survey telescopes. “I don’t
think they intended to screw up people’s
skies,” says Megan Donahue, president of the
American Astronomical Society. “It was just
because nobody asked that question of them.”
SpaceX is trying to mitigate the issue. Some
satellites in the next batch, set to launch soon
after the crewed test, will be black-
ened and equipped with visors that
block sunlight. Donahue praises the
company for working with research-
ers to address the problems. “We’re
all into science,” she says.
But the episode has reminded
space scientists not to under-
estimate SpaceX’s potential impacts
on their fields. Although Musk is of-
ten too bullish about the time scales
for his projects, McDowell says, he
tends to realize his dreams in the
end. “[Musk] has strengths and
weaknesses. His overoptimism is
kind of both.” jAdam Mann is a journalist in
Oakland, California.812 22 MAY 2020 • VOL 368 ISSUE 6493 sciencemag.org SCIENCECREDITS: (PHOTO) NASA KENNEDY/CC BY-NC-ND/FLICKR; (GRAPHIC) X. LIU/SCIENCE; (DATA) JONATHAN MCDOWELL/CFASpaceX Space shuttle OtherNumber of NASA launches
’00 ’02 ’04 ’06 ’08 ’10 ’12 ’14 ’16 ’18 ’
051015*Includes launches with a major NASA payload through April, including failuresGoing up
Since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, SpaceX rockets
have picked up an increasing share of NASA’s launches.Next week, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule will carry two NASA astronauts into orbit.Published by AAASCorrected 21 May 2020. See full text.