• The FAA had previously delayed a Starship test over worries that nearby civilians were at risk.
• SpaceX deployed a new radar to reduce the odds of injuries, but NASA blocked its use.
• SpaceX has set up the system, but it’s unclear whether it has turned it on, or when it might.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

When the FAA cancelled a SpaceX Starship rocket launch at the last minute in late January, the cause seemed clear. 

SpaceX had flown its previous prototype, SN8, without demonstrating to the aviation oversight agency that civilians would be properly protected should the launch fail. The FAA had not finished reviewing that breach and overseeing SpaceX’s fixes by the time SN9 was ready to fly in Boca Chica, Texas. 

“While we recognize the importance of moving quickly to foster growth and innovation in commercial space, the FAA will not compromise its responsibility to protect public safety,” wrote an FAA spokesperson at the time. “We will approve the modification only after we are satisfied that SpaceX has taken the necessary steps to comply with regulatory requirements.”

An investigation by Insider has found that SpaceX subsequently bought and installed a new radar system that could help satisfy the FAA’s concerns. However, it has since been forbidden to use it by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and NASA. 

As SpaceX’s safety efforts are pulled in opposite directions by different government agencies, it is uncertain what will explode next: another Starship prototype, or Elon Musk on Twitter. 

Blowing up

Experimental rockets often fail, including SpaceX’s: Seven Starship tests have ended in pressure failures, crashes, or other accidental blasts. Far field overpressure – also called distant focused overpressure (DFO) – is a phenomenon where shockwaves can bounce through the atmosphere to break windows a surprising distance away. The strength of a DFO depends on wind speed, temperature gradient, humidity, and atmospheric pressure, but large explosions, including one in the Nevada desert in the 1960s, have broken windows up to seven miles away.

The FAA requires launch operators to conduct DFO safety analyses to keep the casualty risk below 1 in 10,000, including injuries from glass shards propelled into buildings or falling from upper story windows. 

SpaceX

Residents of Boca Chica village, the Texas town where SpaceX is developing the Starship rocket, have previously been warned to move outside during tests so they do not get hit with flying glass. At least one resident is reported as having claimed that a SpaceX test broke her window. 

For its first high altitude Starship test, on December 8 of last year, SpaceX applied to the FAA for a waiver to exceed the maximum public safety risk for DFO. The FAA denied that waiver, and SpaceX proceeded with the launch regardless. SN8 successfully reached an altitude of about 41,000 feet but landed at high speed and exploded dramatically. There were no reports of injuries or civilian damage. 

The FAA required SpaceX to conduct an investigation of the incident, including a comprehensive review of the company’s safety culture, operational decision making, and process discipline. It also mentioned the possibility of enforcement actions, which can include hefty fines, to  ensure compliance. Until the FAA had completed that investigation and approved any corrective actions, it wrote in a statement, “all testing that could affect public safety at the Boca Chica launch site was suspended.”  

Weather radar

Neither the FAA nor SpaceX has publicly detailed what those corrective actions were. However, two weeks later, SpaceX filed an experimental application with the FCC to test a sophisticated radar-based wind profiler at Boca Chica. 

According to the application, the system would “gather wind speed/direction measurements up to 5km in the atmosphere,” and its specific objective was to “generate historical wind models of the Boca Chica Range and contribute to the SpaceX Distance Focused Overpressure tool.”

Radiometrics, the radar’s manufacturer, told Insider that it had installed similar systems at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Bases. These were used to check the weather for multiple rocket launches, including the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy in 2018. “Interference was a concern,” Randolph “Stick” Ware, Radiometrics’ founder and chief scientist, said. “At the Cape, we had to turn down the power and change the radar pulse profile to avoid interfering with ham radio operators.” 

SpaceX

In its application, SpaceX stated: “The radar wind profiler will contribute to the development of the Starship program, with the ultimate goal of making mankind a multi-planetary species, in the areas of flight safety and reliability by providing accurate, reliable wind speed/direction data.”

Photographs posted on a forum in early March show the Radiometrics system deployed at Boca Chica. 

But SpaceX could not rely on its new gadget for the planned launch of SN9 on January 28, nor on February 2 when it eventually flew, as the FCC had not yet allowed its use. 

In fact, the FCC had passed the application on to another federal agency, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).  The NTIA is the White House’s principal advisor on telecoms issues, and is also tasked with conducting inter-agency reviews of some FCC applications to ensure they don’t interfere with government users. 

This sort of approval is often a pro-forma affair, especially as Boca Chica is on an isolated spit surrounded by protected wetlands, many miles from the nearest airport or population center.

NASA says no

Nevertheless, one agency did raise an objection: NASA, which had relied on Radiometrics radars during its own rocket launches and landings. 

NASA told NTIA, which told the FCC, which told SpaceX last week that “the requested operations are dismissed due to harmful interference anticipated to NASA operations.”

When contacted by Insider, a NASA spokesperson said: “The proposed bandwidth in SpaceX’s request overlaps frequencies for existing NASA satellite uplink operations.” 

Many small satellites and tiny Cubesats, including dozens launched on SpaceX rockets, use the same frequency as the Radiometrics radar to communicate with ground stations on Earth. 

However, the International Telecommunication Union, which oversees many interference disputes, has written that “methods to enhance [frequency] sharing may be feasible,” including siting radars in remote locations and tweaking their signals.

SPadre.com

The only recent NASA activity near Boca Chica that Insider could identify was a high altitude plane that observed the SN8 test flight in December. 

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment, but Elon Musk’s views on bureaucracy are well known. Shortly before the SN8 test in December, he told The Wall Street Journal, “A lot of the time, the best thing the government can do is just get out of the way.”

After the forced delay in launching SN9 in January, Musk tweeted, “The FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory structure. Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.”

The FAA told Insider that it was not aware of the possible deployment of the Radiometrics wind radar, and that it had no role in the FCC denying SpaceX’s request. 

A source with knowledge of the installation said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Elon decided to move the system a few kilometers south [into Mexico] to avoid the restriction.”

New FAA rules that are meant to streamline commercial space launches came into effect this week. While many rocket launches should now require less paperwork, the agency wants to see more detail in DFO analyses. 

Launch operators must now account for the “characteristics of exposed windows and the population’s susceptibility to injury, with considerations including shelter types, window types, and the time of day,” and calculate the potential for enhanced shockwaves given the meteorological conditions. 

The Radiometrics system could provide exactly that live data, but only if SpaceX gets to use the thing. 

It would be ironic if the only thing preventing SpaceX from gathering weather data to comply with FAA safety rules and accelerate humanity’s path to space, was NASA itself.