SpaceX in talks to land and recover Starship rocket off Australia's coast

WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - SpaceX is in talks with U.S. and Australian officials to land and recover one of its Starship rockets off Australia's coast, a possible first step toward a bigger presence for Elon Musk's company in the region as the two countries bolster security ties, according to three people familiar with the plans.

Since a Starship rocket made a controlled splashdown for the first time in June in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX has been eager to expand its testing campaign. Successful landings and recovery of the boosters afterward are important elements of the speedy development of the giant and reusable rocket designed to launch satellites to orbit and land astronauts on the moon.

The plan would be to launch Starship from a SpaceX facility in Texas, land it in the sea off Australia's coast and recover it on Australian territory. Getting permission to do so would require loosening U.S. export controls on sophisticated space technologies bound for Australia, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

President Joe Biden's administration already has sought to ease similar restrictions within the AUKUS security alliance, opens new tab, a grouping of the United States, Australia and Britain aimed at countering China.

SpaceX, the U.S. Space Force and the Australian Space Agency did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Towing Starship, after it has landed in the ocean or on a barge, to a nearby port on Australia's western or northern coasts would be ideal, though more specific plans and locations are still being discussed, the sources said.

The conversations underscore the U.S. determination to help Australia build up its military as a deterrent to an increasingly assertive China in the region.

The proposed SpaceX arrangement would put more trust in a close American ally that for years has sought to expand its space defense program, strengthen civil and military space ties with the United States and stimulate its own space industrial base.

Discussions in recent weeks between SpaceX executives and U.S. and Australian officials have focused on regulatory hurdles in bringing a recovered Starship booster ashore in a foreign country, the sources said. Because the talks are ongoing, the timing of any Starship landing off Australia remained unclear.

The sources said the proposed test-landings likely would be the first phase of a larger future Australian presence for SpaceX that could include launching from a facility on the continent or landing a Starship booster on the ground instead of the ocean, though discussions on those possibilities are in the early stages.

In developing its partially reusable Falcon 9 about a decade ago, SpaceX also made ocean-based test landings before attempting touchdowns on land and atop barges at sea. Falcon 9 is now SpaceX's workhorse rocket, and its first-stage booster has made hundreds of routine landings from space.

Starship is a 400-foot (120-meter) tall two-stage rocket designed to be fully reusable. It represents SpaceX's next-generation rocket system, meant to loft large batches of satellites into space, land NASA astronauts on the lunar surface and potentially ferry military cargo around the world in roughly 90 minutes.

Starship's June test flight was its most successful to date. Starship was launched from Texas toward space on a suborbital trajectory that sent it freefalling at hypersonic speeds back through Earth's atmosphere before reigniting its engines for a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, about 90 minutes after launch. Its SuperHeavy booster landed in the Gulf of Mexico.

Previous test flights had ended with Starship disintegrating before a safe landing could be achieved. The June flight has led SpaceX to pursue a new phase of more complicated landing tests, according to multiple people familiar with the campaign.

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's conceptual "Rocket Cargo" program envisions using suborbital rockets to swiftly deliver military cargo around the world in 90 minutes, called point-to-point delivery. Some at the Pentagon viewed the June Starship test launch as a crucial demonstration of this program, according to U.S. defense officials.

A Starship launch from Texas and landing off Australia could further demonstrate point-to-point delivery.

While still in an early phase, the delivery time for rocket-based cargo around the planet - taking advantage of orbital velocity of 17,000 miles per hour (27,350 kph) and a hypersonic reentry through Earth's atmosphere - would be a fraction of the roughly 12 to 24 hours typically needed for traditional aircraft.

SpaceX since 2021 has been studying how to use to Starship for those deliveries under a $102 million Pentagon contract. The program will graduate to a more serious prototype effort with the U.S. Space Force next year, according to 2025 budget documents.