Watch SpaceX launch Starship’s sixth test flight

On November 20, 2024By Littum

SpaceX launched sixth test flight of its Starship rocket on Tuesday as the company looks to ramp up development of the mammoth vehicle.

The rocket took off from SpaceX’s private “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas. There are no people on board the Starship flight.

The spacecraft reached space and will travel halfway around Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX aimed to return the rocket’s “Super Heavy” booster after it separated from the Starship, landing it on the arms of the company’s launch tower. But SpaceX said during its webcast that the booster did not clear its “commitment criteria” necessary for the capture, so the booster splashed into the Gulf of Mexico instead.

The SpaceX starship lifts off from Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas on November 19, 2024 for the Starship Flight 6 test.

Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images

As with each previous test flight, SpaceX aims to push development further by testing additional Starship capabilities, including re-igniting an engine in space and testing its heat shield as it re-enters the atmosphere.

Additionally, the evening launch means this will be the first time the Starship has done a daylight splashdown.

SpaceX typically has a cadre of VIPs to watch Starship launches, and with CEO Elon Musk’s close relationship with President-elect Donald Trump, the sixth flight is no different. Trump is expected to attend the launch on Tuesday, just as he did when he came to watch SpaceX’s first astronaut launch in Florida in 2020 during his first administration.

Push the envelope

SpaceX captures the first stage “Super Heavy” booster of its Starship rocket on October 13, 2024.

Sergio Flores | Afp | Getty Images

SpaceX has flown the entire Starship rocket system on six space flight tests so far since April 2023 with a steadily increasing cadence. Its previous launch last month contained dramatic first capture of the rocket’s more than 20-story high booster.

After the successful fifth flight, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that SpaceX was authorized to proceed with the sixth flight.

However, as with its previous test flights, the fifth launch was not without incident. SpaceX management revealed in audio posted after the launch on social media by Musk that the Starship’s booster narrowly missed capture due to a timing problem with one of the rocket’s subsystems.

“We were one 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 — for example, mistakenly telling a healthy rocket not to try that catch ,” an unidentified person told Musk in the audio.

SpaceX did not recapture the booster. The company said on its website that it made hardware upgrades to the rocket’s booster for improved redundancy and improved structural strength.

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The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new method of flying cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a manned lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis lunar program.

Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy booster, the Starship stands 397 feet tall and is about 30 feet in diameter.

The Super Heavy booster, which is 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket’s journey into 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 will launch for the first time in 2022.

The starship itself, 165 feet tall, has six Raptor engines—three for use in Earth’s atmosphere and three for operating in the vacuum of space.

The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The full system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant for launch.