Elon Musk Says Starship Will Launch Giant Telescopes Into Space

Elon Musk said Wednesday that Starship, which reached orbit for the first time on September 28, could expand physics research by carrying much larger telescopes into orbit and giant observatories to the Moon.

The statement follows Starship Flight 14 on Monday, September 28, the first flight of the program to reach orbit. That mission deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites in a single flight, and Musk is now pointing to a new science use case for the fully reusable heavy-lift vehicle beyond satellite deployment.

Telescope designers today must work within the mass and volume limits of existing launch vehicles, which restrict how large an observatory can be. A vehicle as large and fully reusable as Starship could carry mirror and structure designs that would not fit inside any current fairing, which is the basis for Musk’s claim about expanding the aperture of physics research.

“Starship will expand the aperture of physics research by placing much larger telescopes in orbit and giant ones on the Moon,” Musk said Wednesday.

SpaceX demonstrated the vehicle’s payload capability on the orbital flight this week. The mission deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites in a single flight, and the company later published a recap of what went right and wrong on Flight 14. Starlink also streamed live video from Starship while it was in orbit during the mission. It has been a busy week for the company, which also completed a full launch day rehearsal for NASA’s Crew-13 mission ahead of its October 1 launch to the International Space Station.

Turning that idea into a regular science mission would require SpaceX to establish a steady Starship flight cadence and build a broader payload record. The size of future payloads and the pace of upcoming flights will offer the clearest indication of how quickly that capability is developing.