SpaceX’s welding robot for upper-stage Starship rocket spotted in Texas as firm moves full speed ahead with Starship Flight 7.
As it prepares for Starship Flight 7, SpaceX is busy manufacturing rockets for subsequent flights to fuel its 2025 Starship test campaign. Footage from local media in Boca Chica, Texas, shows the firm manufacturing what appears to be a component of an upper-stage Starship rocket in its factory. SpaceX is building a massive factory in Boca Chica called the Starfactory, through which it plans to eventually produce 1,000 upper-stage Starship rockets annually. Today’s footage shows technicians working on the upper stage of Starship, complete with heat shield tiles. It also shows robots welding Starship’s nose cone at multiple angles.SpaceX Picks Up The Pace With Starship Flight 7 Tests In Texas
SpaceX manufactures its upper and lower-stage Starship rockets in stages. After rolling steel sheets into tubes, the tubes are welded together to form the basic structure that surrounds the rockets’ tanks and other internal structures. Specifically for the second stage of the Starship spacecraft, since the forward or upper stage uses flaps and has to be aerodynamically shaped for ascent, it is assembled differently than others.
