Starship during a high-altitude flight test
SpaceX
SpaceX is making preparations for the sixth test flight of the world’s most powerful rocket, Starship. The company has been taking a fail fast, learn fast approach to research and development more akin to the world of Silicon Valley than aerospace, and the pace of launches only appears to be speeding up.
When is the next flight?
SpaceX says on its website that the sixth flight test of Starship is targeted to launch as early as Monday 18 November. This claim is backed up by the Federal Aviation Administration having issued a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) warning of a rocket launch in the area of SpaceX’s launch pads in Boca Chica, Texas. The 30-minute launch window will open at 4pm local time (10pm UK time).
It took SpaceX 18 months to carry out the first five Starship test flights, and the fifth test flight took place in the middle of October. If the company carries out the sixth next week, it will mean a gap of just over one month since the last flight – its fastest turnaround yet.
What will SpaceX attempt in flight six?
In many ways flight 6 will be a repeat of flight 5, but with a few key differences.
The first stage will again attempt a chopstick landing back at the launch pad, which is a tactic designed to eventually allow the booster to be re-used multiple times and massively reduce the cost of putting payloads into orbit.
The upper stage will again reach space, carry out a partial orbit and then re-enter Earth’s atmosphere for a splash landing in the Indian Ocean. But this time, the upper stage will be attempting to reignite one of its Raptor engines while in space in order to collect valuable operational data. It will also be testing new heatshield designs during re-entry.
One other difference is that the launch will be taking place later in the day so that the ocean landing of the upper stage can be filmed in greater detail. Previous missions have seen night landings and therefore video – while cinematic and dramatic – hasn’t given engineers as much insight as a daytime landing will.
What happened during previous Starship launches?
Test flight 1 on 20 April 2023 saw three of the first stage’s 33 engines fail to ignite, and the rocket later span out of control and self-destructed.
The second test flight on 18 November 2023 got further, gaining enough altitude that the first and second stages separated as planned. But the first stage exploded before reaching ground level and the second stage self-destructed, although not before successfully reaching space.
Test flight 3 on 14 March 2024 was at least a partial success as the upper stage reached space once more, but it failed to return to ground level intact.
The next flight, number 4 on 6 June, saw the upper stage reach an altitude of over 200 kilometres and travel at more than 27,000 kilometres per hour. Both the booster and upper stage completed soft splashdowns in the ocean.
Test flight 5 was the most ambitious to date, with Starship’s Super Heavy booster – the first stage of the rocket – dropping back to the launch pad and being safely caught by SpaceX’s launch tower, called Mechazilla, which is equipped with a pair of “chopsticks” to grab the craft at a specific point and secure it, allowing it to be lowered to the ground.
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