Watch SpaceX launch Starship’s sixth check flight

SpaceX launched the sixth check flight of its Starship rocket on Tuesday, as the corporate appears to be like to maintain up momentum of the mammoth automobile’s growth.

The rocket took off from SpaceX’s personal “Starbase” facility close to Brownsville, Texas. There aren’t any folks on board the Starship flight.

Starship reached house after which will journey midway across the Earth earlier than reentering the ambiance and splashing down within the Indian Ocean.

As with every earlier check flight, SpaceX goals to push growth additional by testing further Starship capabilities, together with reigniting an engine whereas in house and testing its heatshield whereas reentering the ambiance.

Moreover, the night launch time implies that this would be the first time Starship makes a daylight splashdown.

SpaceX sometimes has a cadre of VIPs to view Starship launches and, with CEO Elon Musk’s shut relationship with President-elect Donald Trump, the sixth flight is not any totally different. Trump is anticipated to attend the launch on Tuesday, just like when he got here to look at SpaceX’s first astronaut launch in Florida in 2020 throughout his first administration.

SpaceX has flown the complete Starship rocket system on 5 spaceflight checks to this point since April 2023, at a steadily rising cadence. Its earlier launch final month featured the dramatic first catch of the rocket’s greater than 20-story tall booster.

After the profitable fifth flight, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that SpaceX was licensed to maneuver ahead with the sixth flight.

However, as with its earlier check flight, the fifth launch was not with out incidents. SpaceX administration, in audio posted after the launch on social media by Musk, revealed that Starship’s booster practically missed the catch resulting from a timing challenge with one of many rocket’s subsystems.

“We have been one second away from that tripping and telling the rocket to abort and attempt to crash into the bottom subsequent to the tower as a substitute of [landing at] the tower — like, erroneously inform a wholesome rocket to not attempt that catch,” an unidentified particular person informed Musk within the audio.

SpaceX will try the booster catch once more, with the corporate saying on its web site that it has made {hardware} upgrades to the rocket’s booster for improved redundancy and improved structural power.

The Starship system is designed to be absolutely reusable and goals to change into a brand new methodology of flying cargo and other people past Earth. The rocket can be important to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX gained a multibillion-dollar contract from the company to make use of Starship as a crewed lunar lander as a part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.

Starship is each the tallest and strongest rocket ever launched. Totally stacked on the Tremendous Heavy booster, Starship stands 397 ft tall and is about 30 ft in diameter.

The Tremendous Heavy booster, which stands 232 ft tall, is what begins the rocket’s journey to house. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which collectively produce 16.7 million kilos of thrust — about double the 8.8 million kilos of thrust of NASA’s Area Launch System rocket, which launched for the primary time in 2022.

Starship itself, at 165 ft tall, has six Raptor engines — three to be used whereas within the Earth’s ambiance and three for working within the vacuum of house.

The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The total system requires greater than 10 million kilos of propellant for launch.