SpaceX launches Starship for its sixth test flight

SpaceX launched another test flight of its Starship rocket on Tuesday, forgoing an attempt to capture the Super Heavy booster at the launch site near Brownsville, Texas, but successfully reigniting one of its engines in space for the first time .

During its sixth test flight of Starship, SpaceX hoped to repeat the capture maneuver via mechanical arms, which it successfully completed on October 13.

“This is only the sixth of many future flight tests of Starship before it becomes fully operational, and we tend to conduct our tests in the open, just like today, and that means people can sometimes tell when our hardware isn’t performing as we planned during those tests, and that’s OK,” a representative said on SpaceX’s livestream before the launch.

The default, which SpaceX wrote in a statement ahead of Starship’s sixth test flight, is to ensure the safety of the team and the public and was due to unhealthy systems on the booster and tower or a missed manual command from the flight director the mission. The manual command must be sent before the boostback burn is complete, SpaceX wrote, or the booster will reset its flight back to land in the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX successfully reignited one of its Raptor engines while in space for the first time, a significant achievement as SpaceX prepares to expand its reach into crewed missions to Earth’s orbit, the moon and to Mars .

The spaceship successfully landed in the Indian Ocean using a turnaround maneuver. This feat, although accomplished earlier, was notable because SpaceX designed this flight specifically to test the vehicle’s limits. SpaceX removed approximately 2,100 tiles from Starship’s heat shield to determine how much heat the ship could or could not withstand.

“To put it as bluntly as possible, don’t be surprised if this isn’t a smooth flight to landing,” a representative said on SpaceX’s livestream before the launch. “Today we are purposefully figuring out how far we can go and discovering the true limits of the vehicle as we plan for the future return and capture of ships, and even though no ship recovery is expected today, the telemetry and data that we receive until the end is what we are looking for and what will help us achieve a rapidly reusable spaceship of the future.”

SpaceX’s stated goal is to one day recover and reuse boosters and spacecraft for future missions. With the successful landing, SpaceX is one step closer to being able to capture the Starship spacecraft in the same way it captured the booster in the fifth flight test, and reuse it for subsequent missions.

Starship, SpaceX’s nearly 400-foot-tall system, is a two-stage megarocket with the Starship spacecraft stacked on top of the Super Heavy booster.

The spacecraft, according to SpaceX, is intended to one day carry crews and cargo to orbit and land on the moon and Mars. Starship is expected to play a key role in NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon as early as 2026.

The Artemis program hopes to use the missions to the moon as a stepping stone to bringing humans to Mars, a goal Musk has often expressed. SpaceX reported on Tuesday X minutes before Starship’s launch that it had recently tested heat shield materials for a possible Starship mission to Mars in 2026.

Present at the launch was SpaceX founder Elon Musk, as well as newly elected President Donald Trump, who confirmed his presence on social media on Tuesday afternoon.

“I am going to the Great State of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever put into space, not just into space, but simply by lifting it off the ground,” Trump wrote.

Musk has continued to portray himself as a close confidant of Trump, accompanying him on meetings with foreign leaders, playing golf with his family in Florida, visiting New York together for a UFC match and meeting with Republican members of Congress in Washington DC.

Musk’s super PAC donated an estimated $200 million to Trump’s election and accompanied him on the campaign trail and on election night. Trump announced last week that he plans to create a Department of Government Efficiency — named after Musk’s cryptocurrency — with Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy leading efforts to cut spending in the federal government. Under Trump’s announcement, the department will function outside the federal government, so its power and oversight over government spending is unknown.

Flight route and previous flight tests

Upon liftoff, the Super Heavy booster activates its 33 Raptor engines to propel the Starship spacecraft. The booster uses most of its fuel before separating from the spacecraft. The booster is then planned to return to the launch site, where it would be captured by mechanical arms.

On October 13, SpaceX’s fifth test flight of Starship attracted international attention when the 70-meter-tall Super Heavy booster flew back to its landing structure and was caught with what SpaceX calls “chopsticks” in the air.

“Starship’s fifth flight test was a pivotal moment toward a complete and rapidly reusable launch system. …The success of the first capture attempt demonstrated the feasibility of the design while providing valuable data to continue improving hardware and software performance,” the company wrote in a statement on Tuesday about the sixth launch.

SpaceX decided to forego recapturing the booster due to safety risks and circumstances.

“We would much rather find the bugs and limits now during testing rather than later when the stakes are higher,” a SpaceX representative said during the livestream. “While we determine an acceptable level of technical risk for our vehicle and path to learn as quickly as possible, we will not accept compromises when it comes to the safety of the public or our team.”

Starship’s upper stage then uses six of its own engines to fly into space before entering a coasting phase.

SpaceX has returned one of Starship’s Raptor engines to space for the first time. The engines had previously been reignited on takeoff, landing and crash, but never in orbit before Tuesday. Had one of the engines not been lifted, Starship would still have traveled the same course as the fifth test flight and landed at its intended location.

On Tuesday, Starship’s upper stage flew the same trajectory as in October, successfully landing in the Indian Ocean after using its engines to turn the ship around.

In addition to another attempt at the fifth flight test, Tuesday’s test also looked at new secondary thermal protection materials and flew at a “higher angle of attack” during the final descent to gain more data on future landing opportunities, SpaceX wrote in the announcement. the sixth test.

During Starship’s fourth flight test in June, the spacecraft dropped heat tiles meant to protect it from harsh temperatures. After the mission, Musk said the spacecraft landed six miles from its intended landing site in the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX reworked Starship’s entire heat shield after that mission.

“Each of these flights is one step closer to a fully operational spacecraft that will take us beyond Earth orbit, and with our rapid iteration rate here, the moon and Mars are not nearly as far in the future as you might think,” said a representative on SpaceX’s livestream Tuesday.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: SpaceX launches Starship for its sixth test flight