Wind Tunnel Tests Wrap For Redesigned Moon Rocket Booster
Data Will Help Guide Software For SpaceX’s Artemis III Lunar Lander
NASA and SpaceX have completed a new round of wind tunnel testing on the redesigned Super Heavy booster that will launch the Starship lunar lander for next year’s Artemis III demonstration mission, according to a NASA news release.
“NASA has a lot of experience with unsteady aerodynamics. We used the agency’s broad experience base of conducting wind tunnel tests for the space shuttle, the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, and Orion spacecraft to efficiently set up and analyze the wind tunnel testing for the Super Heavy Version 3.”
Manish Mehta, NASA
Engineers ran the tests at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, using a 1.2% scale model of the Super Heavy Version 3 booster. The work builds on a previous round of testing completed at Ames in 2024, according to NASA.
Version 3 of Starship and Super Heavy carries a substantially different design than earlier iterations. Changes include new Raptor 3 engines, the removal of the engine section skirt and integrated base heat shield, three gridfins instead of four — each 50% larger — and an integrated hot stage in place of the previous single-use interstage. Those changes prompted NASA and SpaceX engineers to seek new data on how the booster will handle atmospheric forces during re-entry, when it returns to the launch site for reuse.
“When a rocket, or an airplane, flies through air at high speed, it’s subjected to steady aerodynamic forces and moments, and unsteady aerodynamic forces and moments,” said Jayanta Panda, unsteady aerodynamics subject matter expert at NASA Ames and a member of the Human Landing System Plume and Aero Environments team. “An example of a steady aerodynamic force would be when air smoothly flows over the surface of the rocket as it ascends. An unsteady aerodynamic force would be air ‘buffeting,’ or hitting, certain areas the rocket at less predictable times and potentially causing vibrations.”
The tests, conducted in late 2025, ran the scale model through both the Ames transonic wind tunnel, which reaches speeds from Mach 0.2 to Mach 1.4 — Mach 1 equals about 761 mph — and the facility’s supersonic tunnel, which fires wind at Mach 1.55 to Mach 2.5.
Manish Mehta, discipline lead engineer for the Human Landing System Plume and Aero Environments team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said the agency drew on decades of prior wind tunnel work to set up and analyze the Super Heavy tests.
“NASA has a lot of experience with unsteady aerodynamics,” Mehta said. “We used the agency’s broad experience base of conducting wind tunnel tests for the space shuttle, the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, and Orion spacecraft to efficiently set up and analyze the wind tunnel testing for the Super Heavy Version 3. In fact, similar testing at the Ames Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel resulted in adding strakes to SLS for Artemis II, so what we learned for Artemis II is helping us get to Artemis III and beyond.”
Mehta said the steady-force data will feed into flight software that guides the rocket during re-entry, while the unsteady pressure readings help engineers model the loads the booster experiences as it comes back through the atmosphere.
NASA is working with SpaceX to develop the Starship Human Landing System, or HLS, under a contract to carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and back. Version 3 of Starship and Super Heavy is expected to serve as the basis for the Starship HLS used on Artemis III and on a later crewed lunar landing NASA has targeted for 2028.