SpaceX’s Starship will launch from Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on November 19, 2024, to test Starship Flight 6.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images
SpaceX began the sixth test flight of its Starship rocket on Tuesday, aiming to maintain momentum in the development of its giant spacecraft.
The rocket took off from SpaceX’s commercial Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas. There was no one on board the Starship flight.
The spacecraft reached space, circled halfway around the Earth, then re-entered the atmosphere and fell into the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX was aiming to return the rocket’s “super heavy” booster, which separated from Starship, and land it on the arm of the company’s launch tower. However, SpaceX said in a webcast that the booster did not pass the “commitment criteria” required for a capture attempt, so the booster instead splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico.
As with each previous test flight, SpaceX is furthering its development this time by testing additional features of Starship, such as reigniting its engines during its stay in space and testing new elements of its heat shield.
Additionally, the evening launch time means this is the first time Starship has touched down during the day in the Indian Ocean.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump watches as Elon Musk explains the launch process for the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in a control room in Brownsville, Texas, on November 19, 2024.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
exceed the limit
SpaceX captured the Starship rocket’s first stage “Super Heavy” booster on October 13, 2024.
Sergio Flores | AFP | Getty Images
SpaceX has flown the complete Starship rocket system in six spaceflight tests to date since April 2023, with the frequency steadily increasing. The previous launch last month resulted in a dramatic first capture of the rocket’s booster, which is more than 20 stories tall.
After the fifth successful flight, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that SpaceX was authorized to proceed with a sixth flight.
However, like previous test flights, the fifth launch was not without incident. SpaceX executives said in audio posted by Musk on social media after the launch that Starship’s boosters nearly missed capture due to a timing issue with one of the rocket’s subsystems. revealed.
A SpaceX Starship rocket takes off during its sixth test flight in Brownsville, Texas, USA, November 19, 2024.
Brandon Bell | via Reuters
“We stumbled with one second left and ordered the rocket to abort and hit the ground next to the tower. [landing at] “The tower is like accidentally telling a healthy rocket not to try its catch,” an unidentified person told Musk in the audio.
SpaceX again failed to capture the booster. The company said on its website that it had made hardware upgrades to the rocket’s boosters to increase redundancy and improve structural strength.
The Starship system is designed to be completely reusable and aims to become a new way to fly cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also important to NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX has won a multibillion-dollar contract from NASA to use Starship as a manned lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.
Starship is the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on its Super Heavy booster, Starship is 397 feet tall and approximately 30 feet in diameter.
The 232-foot-tall superheavy booster is the beginning of the rocket’s journey into space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines that together generate 16.7 million pounds of thrust. That’s nearly double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which first launched in 2022.
The 165-foot-tall Starship itself has six Raptor engines, three of which operate in Earth’s atmosphere and three 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.
