The largest and most powerful rocket ever built has now completed six launches.
SpaceX’s 400-foot-tall (122-meter) Starship mega-rocket launched today (November 19) for the sixth time in history, landing in South Texas at 5 p.m. ET (10 p.m. GMT). It rose from an orbital launch pad at one of the company’s starbase sites. (4:00 p.m. local time in Texas).
SpaceX landed Starship’s massive first stage booster, known as Super Heavy, on its launch tower during Starship’s latest flight on Oct. 13. The company was aiming to repeat that feat – what the tower achieved with its “chopstick” weapons today, but flight data did not support the attempt.
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“We deviated from our commitment standards,” SpaceX’s Dan Fott said on the company’s Flight 6 webcast. As a result, Super Heavy ultimately descended for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, crashing into the waves seven minutes after liftoff.
There was also a planned booster catch attempt, and expectations for Flight 6 were high. For example, President-elect Donald Trump traveled to South Texas to see Flight 6 firsthand.
Trump’s support for Musk and Starship is not that surprising. The two billionaires appear to have grown quite close in recent months.
Mr. Musk passionately campaigned for Mr. Trump’s election, spending more than $100 million of his own money. President Trump then appointed Musk as co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency. President Trump said the advisory group would help his administration “dismantle government bureaucracy, reduce excessive regulation, reduce wasteful spending, and reorganize federal agencies.”
Action-packed flight
Today’s mission is about more than just returning the Super Heavy to Earth. SpaceX also wanted to put its 165-foot-tall (50-meter) spacecraft, called Starship’s upper stage, Starship, or simply “Ship,” through its paces.
For this launch, the ship would follow the same semi-orbital trajectory as Flight 5, with the goal of splashing down in the Indian Ocean off the northwest coast of Australia approximately 65 minutes after liftoff. But Shipp also achieved some new milestones along the way.
For example, Flight 6 carried Starship’s first ever payload onboard: a plush banana that served as a zero-gravity indicator. (It was not deployed into space.) Additionally, the ship briefly reignited one of its six Raptor engines approximately 38 minutes into the flight. (The Super Heavy also employs Raptors, and there are a whopping 33 of them.)
This burnout helped prove that the ship could perform the maneuvers necessary to safely return to Earth during an orbital mission. Indeed, the Ship, like the Super Heavy, is designed for complete and rapid reuse. SpaceX ultimately intends to capture the chopstick arm as well, and will likely try to do so on a test flight in the near future. (Landing directly on the launch pad, rather than on a ship at sea or at a designated touchdown pad, allows for faster and more efficient inspection, refurbishment and reflight, SpaceX said.)
Flight 6 also tested improvements to the ship’s heat shield, which protects the craft as it enters Earth’s atmosphere.
“The flight test will see the removal of entire sections of heat shield tiles on each side of the ship, where new secondary heat protection materials are being evaluated and hardware researched to enable future vehicle catch.” SpaceX wrote in its mission description. “The ship will also fly at a higher angle of attack during the final stages of descent, intentionally emphasizing the limits of flap control to obtain data on future landing profiles.”
SpaceX also changed the launch times for six flights to better observe the ship’s re-entry and splashdown. Flight 5 (and all four of its predecessors) took off from Texas in the morning, and the ship landed halfway around the world in the dark.
Today we all had a great view of the Ship’s successful return to Earth. The shiny, silver craft survived its scorching journey through Earth’s atmosphere, activating three of its six Raptors, assuming a vertical position as it neared the surface, and landing base-first on schedule 65.5 minutes after liftoff. It crashed into the waves.
“It’s unbelievable! We really pushed the limits of the ship and were able to return to Earth,” SpaceX Manufacturing Engineering Manager Jessica Anderson said during today’s webcast.
“Honestly, I’m shocked,” added Kate Tice, co-host of the webcast and senior manager of quality engineering at SpaceX. “I think a lot of people do. The fact that they survived to the end, flying a lower generation heat shield, is just incredible.”
SpaceX is developing Starship to help humans settle the Moon and Mars and perform a variety of other spaceflight tasks, including building the Starlink broadband megaconstellation in low Earth orbit.
NASA has a major stake in the spacecraft, choosing Starship to be the first manned lander for its Artemis mission to the Moon. If all goes according to plan, Starship will land the first NASA astronauts on the moon with its Artemis 3 mission in late 2026.
SpaceX is working to get Starship up and running as quickly as possible, and test flights are a big part of this effort. The mega-rocket has currently flown six times in April and November 2023, and in March, June, October, and November of this year, and the frequency is likely to increase significantly in the near future. be.
Musk’s goal is to launch Starship 25 times in 2025, and 100 times a few years later. While these numbers may seem optimistic, SpaceX has already launched 113 missions with its flagship Falcon 9 rocket through 2024. And the regulatory environment, which Musk has repeatedly criticized in recent months, could soon be significantly relaxed, given President Trump’s goals and policies. Apparently close to the founder and CEO of SpaceX.
These test missions are designed to pave the way for more ambitious journeys, which, if all goes to plan, will come to fruition soon.
“Each of these flights brings us one step closer to a fully operational spacecraft that will take us beyond Earth’s orbit. And at the rapid pace of repetition here, we’ll be able to reach the Moon and Mars.” is not as far off in the future as you might think.” Tice said today. “In fact, we are planning to send Starship to Mars as early as 2026, which is when the next Mars transfer window opens.”
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