Starship flight 6 launch: SpaceX to attempt rocket booster landing at ‘Mechazilla’ tower

Editor’s note: Stay tuned for CNN’s live updates of SpaceX Starship launch.

CNN
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Just weeks after SpaceX stunned audiences with a precision landing of a giant rocket booster, the company is preparing for another test flight of the most powerful launch vehicle ever built. SpaceX will again attempt the maneuver, which involves steering the booster back into the mechanical arms — or “chopsticks” — of a launch tower.

The nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) Starship system is on track to fly as soon as Nov. 19 from the company’s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas.

The two-stage megarocket — which has the Starship spacecraft stacked on top of the Super Heavy booster — will attempt to lift off during a 30-minute window that opens at 5pm ET Tuesday.

SpaceX will live stream the event on the company’s X account and note it its website that the time of the event may change.

President-elect Donald Trump will attend the event, according to three people familiar with his plans. Trump is expected to be joined by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, in another example of Musk’s increasing role in Trump’s orbit.

This uncrewed test marks the fastest turnaround time yet in SpaceX’s test campaign for the Starship, which will play a key role in NASA’s cornerstone Artemis program. Aiming to put boots on the moon as early as 2026, the space agency plans to use the rocket’s upper stage, the Starship spacecraft, as a lunar lander that carries astronauts to the lunar surface.

The goal of these test flights is to find out how SpaceX can one day recover and quickly send Super Heavy boosters and Starship spacecraft for future missions. Rapid recycling of rocket parts is considered essential to drastically reducing the time and cost of getting cargo – or ships of people – into space.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches, said it did not need to undertake the lengthy process of reviewing a launch license change because the flight path of this week’s test flight is expected to closely mimic a previous test flight.

“The FAA determined that SpaceX met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight,” the agency said in a statement. “The FAA determined that the changes SpaceX requested (Tuesday’s test flight) are within the scope of what has been previously analyzed.”

The fifth integrated test flight of Starship was launched on October 13 and drew international attention with SpaceX’s ambitious attempt to maneuver the 232-foot-tall (71-meter) Super Heavy back to a giant landing structure after the booster broke away from the Starship spacecraft.

A pair of giant metal pincers that SpaceX calls “chopsticks” successfully caught the Super Heavy in mid-air.

“Starship’s fifth flight test was a defining moment in the iteration toward a fully and rapidly reusable launch system,” the company said in a statement.

Starship is considered essential to SpaceX’s fundamental mission to eventually transport humans to Mars for the first time.

For NASA’s Artemis program, SpaceX has government contracts worth up to $4 billion to complete the task of developing a cost-effective space transportation system.

When the countdown clock hits zero on Tuesday afternoon, the Super Heavy booster is set to fire up its 33 powerful Raptor engines and propel the Starship spacecraft, which rides atop the booster, into space.

After using up most of its fuel and detaching the spacecraft, the Super Heavy booster will reverse course and steer itself back towards the launch site. The booster will aim to perform another precision landing in the arms of the launch and landing structure — dubbed “Mechazilla” by Musk — at the company’s Starbase facility.

If the test flight crew determines that conditions are favorable for a landing attempt, the booster touchdown should occur about seven minutes after launch.

The Starship spacecraft, meanwhile, will fire up its own six engines before entering a coasting phase as it soars through space. The capsule will briefly re-ignite its engines about half an hour later before preparing for re-entry – the process by which it returns to the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere.

During the fourth integrated Starship test flight in early June, the spacecraft sustained significant damage. The starship’s spacecraft dropped several heat tiles, designed to protect the vehicle from intense temperatures caused by the pressure and friction of reentry.

“Because of lost tiles … the front flaps were so melted it was like trying to control it with little skeleton hands,” Musk said after that mission, adding that the fourth flight landed about 6 miles (9.7 km) from its intended immersion site. in the Indian Ocean.

However, SpaceX made significant progress during Starship’s fifth integrated test flight in mid-October.

Prior to that mission, SpaceX implemented what it called a “complete rework of (Starship’s) heat shield, with SpaceX engineers spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer and additional protection between flap structures.”

A successful test flight on Tuesday could prompt SpaceX to begin tackling more ambitious projects.

“In 2025, SpaceX plans to conduct a long-duration flight test and a propellant transfer flight test,” according to a recent report from NASA’s Office of the Inspector General, or OIG.

Demonstrating the ability to launch a starship into orbit and then rendezvous with a refueling tanker is considered critical to the success of NASA’s Artemis program.

For the human lunar landing mission, called Artemis III, the Starship may need to dock with more than a dozen fuel tankers before continuing its mission to the lunar surface.

SpaceX will also face a “critical design review” for the Artemis III mission next summer, according to the OIG.

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CNN’s Kristen Holmes and Ross Levitt contributed.