Space flight has entered a new era. Two rocket launches on 5 and 6 June demonstrated the capabilities of relatively new spacecraft, each representing a crucial step forward for human space exploration.
Boeing’s Starliner capsule made its first crewed flight, and SpaceX’s huge Starship rocket made its fourth test flight, the first orbital flight it has fully executed without anything falling apart or exploding.
“Nothing blew up, so it was a really good day for space flight progress,” says , an independent consultant in the space industry. She says the successes showcase the fact that we are operating in two different domains: sending humans to orbit, and moving quickly towards sending humans to the moon and beyond.
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With this launch, Starliner joins SpaceX’s Dragon capsule as a second option to carry US astronauts to the International Space Station. This marks the first time any country has had more than one active orbital spacecraft that could safely carry crew, a key achievement for NASA.
It’s a striking change that has taken place in a relatively short period of time. After the Space Shuttle programme ended in 2011, NASA had no other option but to rely on Russian spacecraft to fly US astronauts to the ISS, an arrangement that continued until 2020. “The US has had a strained relationship with Russia, so what we had was an adversarial relationship with a space flight partner on the ground, but still had to rely on them to get our astronauts to space,” says Forczyk. “We want to have that capability independently, and we don’t want to lose it if something went wrong with one of those spacecraft.”
When Starliner docked with the International Space Station (ISS), it was the first time three different crewed vehicles were attached to the station at once. The other ships joining Starliner are the SpaceX Dragon Endeavor spacecraft and the Soyuz MS-25 crew ship. The busy ISS docks are a sign the space flight industry is booming worldwide.
“It’s the maturation of space flight,” says Forczyk. “It starts with cargo to the space station, and then humans to the space station, and then commercial space stations and beyond.”
Starship’s success is a step toward that “beyond”. It is the largest, most powerful rocket ever built, intended to eventually loft astronauts to the moon and Mars. While Starship is still nowhere near reliable enough to carry a crew, the rate of testing and iteration of the craft is incredibly fast.
Delays are still ubiquitous in spacecraft testing because of the complexity of the hardware, but decades of effort are nevertheless coming to fruition across the world of space exploration. Aside from Starliner and Starship, a series of new spacecraft have flown in the past few years, including many missions to the moon and new orbital rockets around the globe.
This seemingly sudden progress is down to the increased involvement of private industry in space flight, which used to be an endeavour only available to huge national agencies, says Forczyk. “There’s pressure [on the commercial space flight side] to develop quickly and become operational and fulfil their contracts and get their return on investment, so there’s speed that wasn’t there before,” she says. This means it is getting easier and easier to send anything – science experiments, space stations, people – into orbit and further afield.
There is also a feedback effect in which each successful flight makes the next flight more likely to be successful and heats up the competition between the dozens of agencies and firms trying to make their mark on the cosmos. Humanity is expanding its reach beyond Earth, and our forays into the universe are beginning to multiply. These two launches are emblematic of that astonishing growth.
Article amended on 10 June 2024
We have corrected the date of the Starliner launch
