SpaceX will conduct the sixth flight check of Starship, the most important rocket ever constructed, as quickly as November 18, following the graceful success of the earlier mission lower than a month in the past.
The excessive flight cadence is thanks, partially, to that success, which included the first-ever return of the Tremendous Heavy booster to the launch website — the place huge “chopstick” arms jutting from the launch tower caught it in mid-air — and a managed, on-target splashdown after suborbital flight of the Starship higher stage within the Indian Ocean. This sixth check contains most of the similar targets; this reality led the Federal Aviation Administration to approve each flight 5 and 6 on the similar time final month. Up till this level, SpaceX has wanted to attend (generally months) for regulatory approval earlier than every Starship launch.
In a publish on its web site, SpaceX says it’ll try to re-create these similar successes on November 18, together with catching the booster on the launch website and an correct Starship splashdown. The corporate can even proceed to check the warmth defend and maneuvers for the upper-stage reentry, “to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online.” Engineers additionally launched plenty of upgrades to the system, together with extra redundancy within the booster propulsion system, up to date software program controls, and different modifications.
SpaceX can even try to relight one of many Ship’s six Raptor engines on orbit, a key functionality to finally additionally reuse the Starship higher stage. Engineers will put this stage by way of its paces in different methods as properly: The corporate will check new secondary thermal safety supplies. As well as, as the corporate put it, “The ship also will intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final phase of descent, purposefully stressing the limits of flap control to gain data on future landing profiles.”
All this testing will culminate in “significant upgrades” to the ship, beginning with flight 7, like redesigned flaps, bigger propellant tanks, and probably the most up-to-date thermal safety.
A dwell webcast of the check will begin round half-hour earlier than the 30-minute launch window at 2 p.m. PT, which will probably be viewable on X or SpaceX’s web site. This late-afternoon launch window (which opens at 4 p.m. native Texas time) will allow higher viewing situations upon reentry, SpaceX stated.
