SpaceX launched the sixth test flight of its Starship rocket on Tuesday as the company looks to maintain the momentum of the giant vehicle’s development.
The rocket took off from SpaceX’s private “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas. There are no people on board the Starship flight.
The spacecraft has reached space and will make half a trip around Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and crashing into the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX aimed to return the rocket’s “Super Heavy” booster after it separated from Starship and land it on the arms of the company’s launch tower. But SpaceX said during its webcast that the booster did not meet the “commit criteria” needed for the capture, so the booster ended up in the Gulf of Mexico instead.
As with every previous test flight, SpaceX plans to further advance development by testing additional capabilities of the spacecraft, including re-igniting an engine in space and testing the heat shield as it re-enters the atmosphere.
Additionally, the evening launch time means this is the first time Starship has crashed in daylight.
SpaceX usually has a group of VIPs to watch Starship launches, and thanks to CEO Elon Musk’s close relationship with newly elected President Donald Trump, the sixth flight is no different. Trump is expected to attend the launch Tuesday, similar to when he came to watch SpaceX’s first astronaut launch in Florida during his first administration in 2020.
Pushing the envelope
SpaceX has so far conducted six spaceflight tests of the entire Starship rocket system since April 2023, at a steadily increasing cadence. The previous launch last month showed the dramatic first capture of the rocket’s 20-plus-story booster.
After the successful fifth flight, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that SpaceX was cleared to proceed with the sixth flight.
But as with the previous test flights, the fifth launch was not without incident. SpaceX management revealed in audio posted to social media by Musk after the launch that Starship’s booster nearly missed the catch due to a timing problem with one of the rocket’s subsystems.
“We were a second away from tripping and telling the rocket to abort and try to crash into the ground next to the tower instead of [landing at] the tower – like wrongly telling a healthy rocket not to attempt that catch,” an unknown person told Musk in the audio.
SpaceX was no longer able to catch the booster. The company said on its website that it has made hardware upgrades to the rocket’s booster for improved redundancy and improved structural strength.
The Starship system is designed to be completely reusable and aims to become a new method of flying cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also crucial to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX has won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.
Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy booster, the Starship is 120 meters high and has a diameter of approximately 9 meters.
The Super Heavy booster, which is 70 meters high, marks the start of the rocket’s journey to space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust — about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which first launched in 2022.
The spaceship itself, which is 50 meters tall, has six Raptor engines: three for use in Earth’s atmosphere and three for use in the vacuum of space.
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The entire system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant for launch.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
