As SpaceX continues to ready its Starship spacecraft for orbital testing, the firm received some good news although the news does give the firm a lot of work.

The good news comes for the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) in the US regarding a proposed expansion of SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The FAA recently concluded a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) of SpaceX’s proposed plans.

The assessment gives SpaceX a greenlight to continue its work on Starship but, it must meet an exhaustive list of environmental impact mitigation measures.

How is this good news? Well according to a report from Space.com, the PEA states that SpaceX doesn’t need to spend time and money on an environmental impact statement which is a stricter and more time consuming review.

Given that SpaceX wants to use Starship to ferry astronauts to the Moon for NASA, time is not something the firm has much of.

There are still stipulations regarding what SpaceX can and can’t do and it needs to take over 75 actions to mitigate the impact on the environment. There are too many of these to mention and you can read the full PEA – which includes these actions – above.

An FAA official told Space.com that one of the measures of the PEA is that more notice is given before launches. The FAA has also outlined when launches can’t take place.

“Closures will not be allowed on 18 identified holidays, and weekend restrictions are limited to no more than five weekends per year, ensuring robust access to the refuge and park throughout the calendar year,” an official said.

While SpaceX celebrated this as one step closer to the orbital flight test of Starship, that road is still rather long. For one, the firm still needs a launch license from the FAA. For now at least, SpaceX can continue expanding and working to take humans back to the Moon.

One step closer to the first orbital flight test of Starship https://t.co/MEcQ6gST6Q pic.twitter.com/jxqEsM62gc

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 13, 2022