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SpaceX\u2019s Starship launch system went through its sixth flight test today, and although the Super Heavy booster missed out on being caught back at its launch pad, the mission checked off a key test objective with President-elect Donald Trump in the audience.<\/p>\n
Trump attended the launch at SpaceX\u2019s Starbase complex in the company of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has been serving as a close adviser to the once and future president over the past few months. In a pre-launch posting to his Truth Social media platform, Trump wished good luck to \u201cElon Musk and the Great Patriots involved in this incredible project.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Starship is the world\u2019s most powerful rocket, with 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines providing more than 16 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. That\u2019s twice the power of the Saturn V rocket that sent Americans to the moon in the 1960s and early \u201970s. The two-stage rocket stands 121 meters (397 feet) tall, with a 9-meter-wide (30-foot-wide) fairing.<\/p>\n Super Heavy had an on-time launch at 4 p.m. CT (22:00 UTC) and was set up to fly itself back to the launch tower to be caught by the giant \u201cMechazilla\u201d arms that were successfully used during last month\u2019s flight test. But four minutes after liftoff, mission controllers said the booster had to be diverted instead to make a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX didn\u2019t immediately report the reason for the diversion.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was not guaranteed that we would be able to make a tower catch today,\u201d launch commentator Kate Tice said during today\u2019s webcast. \u201cSo, while we were hoping for it \u2026 the safety of the teams and the public and the pad itself are paramount. We are accepting no compromises in any of those areas.\u201d<\/p>\n While the booster settled majestically into the Gulf, the Starship second stage \u2014 known as Ship for short \u2014 continued on a track that sent it as high as 190 kilometers (120 miles). A plush banana was placed in Ship\u2019s cargo bay as a zero-gravity indicator, and Tice wore a T-shirt bearing the words \u201cIt\u2019s Bananas!\u201d to play off the lighthearted theme.<\/p>\n Ship successfully relit one of its methane-fueled Merlin engines while in space, which was a key objective for today\u2019s suborbital test. Relighting the engines under such conditions will be required in the future for Ship\u2019s orbital maneuvers.<\/p>\n A little more than an hour after launch, Ship\u2019s engines fired for a final time to make a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The daylight visuals, plus other data collected during the flight, will help SpaceX\u2019s team fine-tune Starship\u2019s design for future tests.<\/p>\n SpaceX plans to use Starship to accelerate deployment of its Starlink broadband satellites, as well as to fly missions beyond Earth orbit. The company has a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to provide a version of Starship that\u2019s customized for lunar landings, starting as early 2026. And Musk has said Starship could take on uncrewed missions starting that same year \u2014 with the first crewed mission set for launch in 2028 if everything goes right.<\/p>\n NASA Administrator Bill Nelson referred to those future flights in a message on Musk\u2019s X social-media platform:<\/p>\n