Goddard Engineering and Technology Directorate

FDF Supports Starship IFT-3

SpaceX launched the third integrated flight test of its Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage from the company’s Starbase orbital launch pad at 8:25 a.m. CT on March 14. This flight test is an important milestone toward providing NASA with a Starship HLS for its Artemis missions.
SpaceX launched the third integrated flight test of its Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage from the company’s Starbase orbital launch pad at 8:25 a.m. CT on March 14. This flight test is an important milestone toward providing NASA with a Starship HLS for its Artemis missions.

On March 14th 2024 the FDF coordinated with the Near Space Network (NSN) to support the SpaceX Starship Integrated Flight Test-3 (IFT-3). FDF provided TDRS pointing data to the Space Relay to ensure communications with the vehicle during the flight test. The FDF also performed pre-flight analysis on the various reentry trajectories in order to determine whether the trajectory dispersions would potentially result in loss-of-signal.

These flight tests set up SpaceX to perform several follow-ons in 2024, building up toward utilizing this vehicle for the Human Landing System (HLS) as part of NASA’s Moon-to-Mars program in bringing astronauts back to the moon.

FDF leverages a broad slate of support and extensive history of mission success, providing key critical flight dynamics and navigation support to HLS, Artemis, Gateway, and all navigation-related aspects of Moon-to-Mars initiative.