SpaceX is making ready for its second try and catch a large rocket booster utilizing its large “chopstick” arms, as the corporate gears up for Starship’s sixth take a look at flight.
Starship is ready to launch on Tuesday, November 19, with a 30-minute launch window that opens at 5:00 p.m. ET. Simply over a month since its groundbreaking booster catch, the rocket will elevate off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, for an additional suborbital flight designed to check Starship’s reusability.
Watch Starship’s sixth flight take a look at → https://t.co/oIFc3u9laE https://t.co/acpdO2brbP
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 16, 2024
SpaceX will broadcast Starship’s sixth take a look at flight on its web site and thru the corporate’s account on X, with a livestream scheduled to start round 45 minutes earlier than liftoff.
A number of days earlier than its scheduled launch, SpaceX moved Starship’s Tremendous Heavy booster to the launch mount at Starbase to arrange it for stacking atop the rocket’s higher stage. The sixth take a look at flight will mark the quickest turnaround for a Starship rocket, having launched simply over a month in the past. Fortunately for SpaceX, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted the corporate approval for built-in flight take a look at 5 that will additionally enable its Starship rocket to fly a sixth time underneath the identical license. Beforehand, SpaceX must look forward to the FAA to grant it a brand new license.
Starship lifted off for its fifth time on October 13, however for the primary time, Starship’s Tremendous Heavy 232-foot-tall (71 meters) booster gently got here down in direction of a particular tower, named Mechazilla, which caught the rocket with its prolonged mechanical arms like an enormous pair of chopsticks. For its sixth launch, SpaceX will try one other Starship booster catch, whereas the higher stage will reignite certainly one of its Raptor engines in area for the primary time and perform maneuvering checks for reentry and descent.
With every take a look at flight, Starship strikes nearer to packing helpful payloads and reaching orbital heights. SpaceX launched its Starship rocket for the primary time in April 2023, however its debut was lower than preferrred because the automobile entered right into a deadly tumble that compelled floor controllers to situation a self-destruct command proper earlier than the four-minute mark of the mission.
Issues slowly improved for the rocket every time it took off. Starship’s fourth liftoff in June broke new grounds in comparison with its earlier take a look at flights, with the rocket largely surviving peak heating and max aerodynamic strain throughout its managed reentry. That paved the way in which for its reentry and booster catch earlier in October, a powerful feat that SpaceX is hoping to repeat for a second time.
In the end, SpaceX plans on retrieving and reusing each Starship’s booster and its higher stage. The corporate’s founder and CEO Elon Musk just lately expressed SpaceX’s aim of catching the higher stage utilizing Mechazilla by early subsequent yr. SpaceX can be transferring in direction of extra frequent launches of Starship, with Musk aiming for 25 launches in 2025. Whether or not or not the rocket can sustain with the area billionaire’s ambition timelines stays to be seen.
