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The following is a list of events of the year 2025 in Texas .
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The following is a list of events of the year 2025 in Texas .
A reusable launch vehicle has parts that can be recovered and reflown, while carrying payloads from the surface to outer space. Rocket stages are the most common launch vehicle parts aimed for reuse. Smaller parts such as rocket engines and boosters can also be reused, though reusable spacecraft may be launched on top of an expendable launch vehicle. Reusable launch vehicles do not need to make these parts for each launch, therefore reducing its launch cost significantly. However, these benefits are diminished by the cost of recovery and refurbishment.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an American space technology company headquartered at the Starbase development site near Brownsville, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the company has made numerous advancements in rocket propulsion, reusable launch vehicle, human spaceflight and satellite constellation technology. As of 2024, SpaceX is the world's dominant space launch provider, its launch cadence eclipsing all others, including private competitors and national programs like the Chinese space program. SpaceX, NASA, and the United States Armed Forces work closely together by means of governmental contracts.
Vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) is a form of takeoff and landing for rockets. Multiple VTVL craft have flown. A notable VTVL vehicle was the Apollo Lunar Module which delivered the first humans to the Moon. Building on the decades of development, SpaceX utilised the VTVL concept for its flagship Falcon 9 first stage, which has delivered over three hundred successful powered landings so far.
SpaceX manufactures launch vehicles to operate its launch provider services and to execute its various exploration goals. SpaceX currently manufactures and operates two members of the Falcon 9 family, the Falcon 9 Block 5 medium-lift launch vehicle and the Falcon Heavy heavy-lift launch vehicle – both of which are powered by SpaceX Merlin engines and employ VTVL technologies to reuse the first stage. As of 2024, the company is also developing the fully reusable Starship launch system, which will replace Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon.
SpaceX has privately funded the development of orbital launch systems that can be reused many times, similar to the reusability of aircraft. SpaceX has developed technologies since the 2010s to facilitate full and rapid reuse of space launch vehicles. The project's long-term objectives include returning a launch vehicle first stage to the launch site within minutes and to return a second stage to the launch pad, following orbital realignment with the launch site and atmospheric reentry in up to 24 hours. SpaceX's long term goal would have been reusability of both stages of their orbital launch vehicle, and the first stage would be designed to allow reuse a few hours after return. Development of reusable second stages for Falcon 9 was later abandoned in favor of developing Starship. However, SpaceX still developed reusable payload fairings for the Falcon 9.
SpaceX Starbase—previously, SpaceX South Texas Launch Site and SpaceX private launch site—is an industrial complex and rocket launch facility that serves as the main testing and production location for Starship launch vehicles, as well as the headquarters of the American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX. Located at Boca Chica, near Brownsville, Texas, United States, and adjacent to South Padre Island, Texas, Starbase has been under near-continuous development since the late 2010s, and comprises a spaceport near the Gulf of Mexico, a production facility at Boca Chica Village, and a test site along Texas State Highway 4.
As of 2023, SpaceX operates four launch facilities: Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), Vandenberg Space Force Base Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E), Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), and Brownsville South Texas Launch Site (Starbase). Space Launch Complex 40 was damaged in the AMOS-6 accident in September 2016 and repair work was completed by December 2017. SpaceX believes that they can optimize their launch operations, and reduce launch costs, by dividing their launch missions amongst these four launch facilities: LC-39A for NASA launches, SLC-40 for United States Space Force national security launches, SLC-4E for polar launches, and South Texas Launch Site for commercial launches.
A super heavy-lift launch vehicle is a rocket that can lift to low Earth orbit a "super heavy payload", which is defined as more than 50 metric tons (110,000 lb) by the United States and as more than 100 metric tons (220,000 lb) by Russia. It is the most capable launch vehicle classification by mass to orbit, exceeding that of the heavy-lift launch vehicle classification.
New Glenn is a heavy-lift launch vehicle developed and operated by the American company Blue Origin. The rocket is designed to have a partially reusable, two-stage design with a diameter of 7 meters (23 ft). The first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines, while the second stage relies on two BE-3U engines, all designed and built in-house by Blue Origin. It launches from Cape Canaveral Launch Complex 36, with future missions planned from Vandenberg Space Launch Complex 9.
Starship is a two-stage fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by American aerospace company SpaceX. On April 20, 2023, with the first Integrated Flight Test, Starship became the most massive, tallest, and most powerful vehicle ever to fly. SpaceX has developed Starship with the intention of lowering launch costs using economies of scale, aiming to achieve this by reusing both rocket stages by "catching" them with the launch tower's systems, increasing payload mass to orbit, increasing launch frequency, mass-manufacturing the rockets and adapting it to a wide range of space missions. Starship is the latest project in SpaceX's reusable launch system development program and plan to colonize Mars.
Spaceflight in 2025 promises to follow the 2020s trend of record breaking orbital launches and increased developments in lunar, Mars and low-earth orbit exploration.
Raptor is a family of rocket engines developed and manufactured by SpaceX. It is the third rocket engine in history designed with a full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) fuel cycle, and the first such engine to power a vehicle in flight. The engine is powered by cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen, a combination known as methalox.
Starship HLS is a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that is slated to transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back. It is being designed and built by SpaceX under the Human Landing System contract to NASA as a critical element of NASA's Artemis program to land a crew on the Moon.
Boca Chica is an area on the eastern portion of a subdelta peninsula of Cameron County, at the far south of the US State of Texas along the Gulf Coast. It is bordered by the Brownsville Ship Channel to the north, the Rio Grande and Mexico to the south, and the Gulf of Mexico to the east. The area extends about 25 miles (40 km) east of the city of Brownsville. The peninsula is served by Texas State Highway 4—also known as the Boca Chica Highway, or Boca Chica Boulevard within Brownsville city limits—which runs east–west, terminating at the Gulf and Boca Chica Beach.
A floating launch vehicle operations platform is a marine vessel used for launch or landing operations of an orbital launch vehicle by a launch service provider: putting satellites into orbit around Earth or another celestial body, or recovering first-stage boosters from orbital-class flights by making a propulsive landing on the platform.
Starship flight test 1 was the maiden flight of the integrated SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. SpaceX performed the flight test on April 20, 2023. The prototype vehicle was destroyed less than four minutes after lifting off from the SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. The vehicle became the most powerful rocket ever flown, breaking the half-century-old record held by the Soviet Union's N1 rocket. The launch was the first "integrated flight test," meaning it was the first time that the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft flew together as a fully integrated Starship launch vehicle.
The following is a list of events of the year 2024 in Texas. Texas is estimated to have a population of roughly 31,000,000 in 2024.
Starship flight test 7 was the seventh flight test of a SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. Flight 7 lifted off from Orbital Launch Pad A (OLP-A) on January 16, 2025, at 22:37:00 UTC at the Starbase launch site in Texas. The prototype vehicles flown were Booster 14, a Block 1 vehicle, and Ship 33, the first Block 2 upper stage, which introduced upgrades in structure, avionics, and other systems. The mission was to follow a trajectory similar to the previous flight, with a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff, to be imaged by a NASA observation aircraft. It also tested a new Starlink satellite deployment system.
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