Enlarge / SpaceX’s Booster 4 is lifted on to its orbital launch mount in South Texas. (credit: Elon Musk/Twitter )
The Federal Aviation Administration released a draft environmental review of SpaceX’s plans for orbital launches from South Texas on Friday, kicking off a 30-day public comment period.
The particular long-awaited procedural step is the first of several regulatory hurdles that SpaceX must clear before obtaining final permission to launch its Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage from a site near Boca Chica, Texas. Such a launch likely remains months away, but it now appears that will the feds will ultimately greenlight South Texas for orbital roll-outs. That seemed far from assured before today.
The document, formally called a Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment, evaluates the potential environmental impacts of SpaceX’s Starship program, including launch and reentry. It also reviews debris recovery, the integration tower and other launch-related construction, and local road closures between Brownsville and Boca Chica beach.
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