A SpaceX Starship vehicle will lift off from Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on November 19, 2024, to test Starship Flight 6.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images
SpaceX launched the sixth test flight of its Starship rocket on Tuesday, as the company looks to maintain development momentum for the giant vehicle.
The rocket lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas. There were no people on board the spacecraft flight.
The spacecraft reached space and traveled halfway around Earth before reentering the atmosphere and falling into the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX aimed to return the Super Heavy rocket booster after it separated from the Starship and landed on the arms of the company's launch tower. But SpaceX said during its webcast that the booster did not meet the “commitment standards” needed for a catch-up attempt, so the booster fell into the Gulf of Mexico instead.
As with every previous test flight, SpaceX is pushing development further by testing additional spacecraft capabilities, this time including restarting the engine while in space and testing new elements of its heat shield.
Additionally, the evening launch time meant that this was the first time the spacecraft had made a daylight landing in the Indian Ocean.
US President-elect Donald Trump looks on as Elon Musk explains the launches of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in the control room on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Pushing the envelope
SpaceX received the “Super Heavy” first stage booster for its Starship rocket on October 13, 2024.
Sergio Flores | AFP | Getty Images
SpaceX has flown the entire Starship rocket system in six spaceflight tests so far since April 2023, at a steadily increasing pace. Its previous launch last month saw the dramatic first capture of the rocket's booster more than 20 stories high.
After the successful fifth flight, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that SpaceX was authorized to proceed with the sixth flight.
But as with its previous test flights, the fifth launch was not without incident. SpaceX management, in an audio clip posted by Musk after the launch on social media, revealed that the Starship booster nearly missed due to a timing issue in one of the rocket's subsystems.
A SpaceX Starship rocket lifts off during its sixth test flight, in Brownsville, Texas, US, November 19, 2024.
Brandon Bell | Via Reuters
“We were one second away from that tumble and told the missile to stop and try to hit the ground next to the tower instead of (landing at) the tower — like incorrectly telling a healthy missile not to try to catch it.” An anonymous person told Musk in the audio recording.
SpaceX was unable to catch the booster again. The company said on its website that it has made hardware upgrades to the rocket's booster to improve redundancy and improve structural strength.
The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new way to transport goods 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 the longest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on a Super Heavy booster, the Starship is 397 feet long and has a diameter of about 30 feet.
The super-heavy booster, measuring 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 from NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which first launched in 2022.
The spacecraft itself, which stands 165 feet tall, has six Raptor engines — three for use while in Earth's atmosphere and three for operation in the vacuum of space.
The missile operates with liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The complete system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant to launch.