SpaceX launched Sixth test flight The company unveiled its Starship rocket on Tuesday as it looks to keep momentum developing the behemoth.
The rocket took off from SpaceX’s private “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas. There was no one on the Starship flight.
Upon reaching space, the Starship will fly half-circle around the Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and crashing into the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX’s goal is to return the rocket’s Super Heavy booster after it separates from Starship and land it on the arm of the company’s launch tower. But SpaceX said in a webcast that the booster did not specify the “submission criteria” required for capture, so the booster instead landed in the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX Starship lifted off from Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on November 19, 2024, for the Starship 6 flight test.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images
As with every previous test flight, SpaceX aims to further development by testing additional capabilities for Starship, including reigniting its engines in space and testing its heat shield upon re-entry.
Additionally, the evening launch time means this will be the first time Starship has splashdown during the day.
SpaceX usually has a group of VIPs to watch Starship launches, and CEO MuskClose relationship with the president-elect Donald Trumpthe sixth flight was no exception. Trump is expected to Attend press conference Tuesday, similar to when he came to watch the SpaceX show First astronaut launched in Florida in 2020 during his first administration.
Challenge the limits
On October 13, 2024, SpaceX captured the first-stage “Super Heavy” booster of its Starship rocket.
Sergio Flores | AFP | Getty Images
Since April 2023, SpaceX has conducted six aerospace tests of the complete Starship rocket system, with the frequency of testing steadily increasing. Its releases last month included dramatic first capture The rocket’s booster is more than 20 stories high.
After the success of the fifth flight, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that SpaceX has been authorized to move forward with the sixth flight.
But, like previous test flights, the fifth launch was not without incident. SpaceX management revealed in audio posted by Musk on social media after the launch that Starship’s booster nearly missed capture due to a timing issue with one of the rocket’s subsystems.
“We were one second away from tripping up and telling the rocket to abort and try to hit the ground next to the tower instead of (landing on) the tower – like mistakenly telling a healthy rocket not to try to catch the ball,” an unidentified person told Musk in the audio.
SpaceX did not catch the booster again. The company said on its website that it made hardware upgrades to the rocket booster to increase redundancy and improve structural strength.
Starship systems are designed to be fully reusable and intended to be a new way to transport cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis lunar program.
Starship is the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Starship, fully stacked on Super Heavy boosters, is 397 feet tall and about 30 feet in diameter.
The Super Heavy booster is 232 feet tall and is the starting point for the rocket’s journey into space. There are 33 Raptor engines on the bottom, which can produce a total of 16.7 million pounds of thrust, about twice the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. First launch in 2022.
The starship itself is 165 feet tall and has six Raptor engines – three for use in Earth’s atmosphere and three that operate in the vacuum of space.
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The entire system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant to launch.
