Starship: the dearMoon mission will embark stars on the Moon

STARSHIP. Since December 8, 2022, we know the identity of the personalities who will take part in the first manned flight of the Starship spacecraft. Led by a Japanese billionaire, this civilian crew should fly to the Moon in 2023.

After a selection that will have lasted more than a year, the list of candidates selected for the trip to lunar orbit orchestrated by Yūsaku Maezawa has been officially unveiled. They are eight in number and represent seven different nationalities. In addition to this crew, there are two replacements who may be called upon if one of the members of the mission is unable to take part in the flight. This group, made up of artists from different backgrounds, is the first crew made up entirely of civilians to make a space flight.

Officially launched in 2021, the dearMoon project is none other than the next goal of billionaire entrepreneur Yūsaku Maezawa, who has already participated in a first space mission by staying on the ISS in 2021. This time, his ambition is to bring together a crew made up of public figures in order to carry out with them the tour of the Moon before returning to Earth. The ship that will take this group of civilians to lunar orbit and back to Earth is the Starship of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company. Scheduled for 2023, the mission will however have to wait for the rocket to prove itself since the latter has still not made its first orbital flight.

DearMoon is a civilian space journey organized by billionaire Yūsaku Maezawa that will take eight passengers with him around the Moon. This is a great first in the history of space conquest since it is the first time that a crew composed entirely of civilians will take off.

According to the flight plan published on the project site, the spacecraft should reach lunar orbit on the 5^e flight day, circle the moon and return to 8^e travel day. Landing on Earth should take place 11 days after takeoff. The ship selected for the dearMoon project is the SpaceX Starship. This will be the spacecraft’s first manned mission, which should take its passengers just 200 kilometers above the surface of the Moon.

On December 8, 2022, the identities of Project dearMoon’s eight crew members and two selected replacements were revealed. Selected from more than one million applicants who responded to the call launched by Yūsaku Maezawa in 2021, the participants are artists according to the wish of the Japanese billionaire. K-pop star, DJ or Youtuber, the profiles are varied and creative, a deliberate choice on the part of Yūsaku Maezawa, who presents his crew in the video below.

The group of astronauts who will take place aboard the Starship spacecraft alongside Yūsaku Maezawa during 2023 is therefore composed of the American DJ Steve Aokiof South Korean rapper Choi Seung Hyunof Czech designer Yemi ADof the Irish photographer Rhiannon Adamof American Youtuber Tim Doddof British photographer Karim Ilyaof American filmmaker Brendan Hall and of theIndian actor Dev D. Joshi. In case of withdrawal, the astronauts who will ensure the replacement are the American snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington and the Japanese dancer Miyu.

What is SpaceX’s Starship?

The Starship is a rocket developed by the SpaceX company which is composed of a launcher, the Super Heavy, surmounted by the Starship spacecraft. It is on board the latter that the astronauts of the missions Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 will land on lunar soil.

From a performance point of view, the Starship rocket is on the way to becoming the most powerful ever used and thus dethroning the SLS launcher of the NASA. The entire rocket has a total of thirty-three Raptor engines. The upper part, the Starship, is designed to be available in different versions depending on the needs.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket is the largest and most powerful ever built. This rocket is composed of an extremely powerful launcher, the Super Heavy, capable of returning to land on Earth to serve again, surmounted by a Starship vessel which is also intended to be reusable. Its unrivaled power is achieved through thirty-three Raptor engines using liquid methane as fuel.

During takeoff, the first stage, named Super Heavy, propels the rocket into the sky. Once in the upper atmosphere, it detaches from the upper part, rotates and returns to land on Earth, spreading its feet for a soft landing. For its part, the upper part, the Starship, turns on its engines and continues its journey through space on its own.

When and where will the first Starship launch take place?

SpaceX’s Starship rocket has been expected for several years and is falling behind schedule. In September 2022, the ultra-powerful launcher successfully ignited seven of its thirty-three engines for the first time. The following November 14, fourteen of them were tested conclusively. The first test flight of the Starship rocket is expected in 2023.

How big is Starship?

The Starship rocket measures a total of 120 meters high and 9 meters in diameter, making it the largest rocket ever built. It thus dethrones the Saturn V rocket which sent the first astronauts to the Moon during the Apollo missions. Its size is out of all proportion to NASA’s SLS launcher, which rises to 98 meters in height once equipped with the capsule. Orion. Only the Starship, that is to say the upper part of the rocket, measures 50 meters high and weighs 1,200 tons.

How much does the Starship rocket cost?

SpaceX has not released the total price for the construction of the Starship rocket, but we know the amount of the contract that was signed between Elon Musk’s company and NASA for the various Artemis missions that involve SpaceX. Thus, for Artemis 3, NASA paid 2.89 billion dollars. For Artemis 4 and the new version of the Starship spacecraft, the contract amounts to 1.15 billion dollars.

In addition, the SpaceX company has unveiled the prices it hopes to be able to offer for its Starship rocket launch services. Elon Musk thus plans to break the prices of the space economy by proposing a price of 2 million dollars per flight while the SLS costs 2 billion dollars.