Lower than a month after launching its Starship rocket and catching its booster, SpaceX is focusing on a sixth take a look at flight of its gleaming stainless-steel rocket which towers nearly 400 ft tall (121 meters).

The corporate introduced on Wednesday a goal launch date of Nov. 18, together with classes realized from Flight 5 and mission goals for Flight 6.

Not like each different mission launch, this time round, SpaceX didn’t have to hedge its bets on the timing of the launch based mostly on regulatory approval. When the Federal Aviation Administration cleared the Flight 5 mission, additionally they accredited the corporate’s plan for Flight 6.

“The FAA decided the adjustments requested by SpaceX for Flight 6 are throughout the scope of what has been beforehand analyzed,” the FAA wrote in an Oct. 12 assertion. “Any modifications requested by SpaceX to the accredited Flight 6 scope of operations could require additional FAA analysis.”

To a big extent, Flight 6 can be a repetition of Flight 5, that includes one other suborbital flight with a splashdown of the Ship higher stage within the Indian Ocean. Nevertheless, the mission will embrace just a few key variations.



This time round, SpaceX is reviving a mission milestone from Flight 3 with its intent to reveal a relight of one of many Raptor vacuum engines throughout the rocket’s coast section. That goal was deserted on that mission when the rocket started to roll way more aggressively than supposed.

“Starship didn’t try its deliberate on-orbit relight of a single Raptor engine as a consequence of automobile roll charges throughout coast,” SpaceX stated in a post-launch assertion on March 14.

With two profitable coast phases throughout the latest flights, SpaceX stated this take a look at is now inside attain and can serve to reveal “the capabilities required to conduct a ship deorbit burn previous to orbital missions.”

Flight 6 is a suborbital mission and there as soon as once more is not going to be a payload onboard the rocket The mission will as an alternative function a educating instrument for SpaceX on additional iterations of the automobile. A few of these classes will come from a greater understanding of the Ship’s thermal safety system.

“A number of thermal safety experiments and operational adjustments will take a look at the bounds of Starship’s capabilities and generate flight knowledge to tell plans for ship catch and reuse,” SpaceX wrote on Wednesday. “The flight take a look at will assess new secondary thermal safety supplies and can have whole sections of warmth protect tiles eliminated on both aspect of the ship in places being studied for catch-enabling {hardware} on future automobiles.”

Not like earlier checks, Flight 6 will depart from Starbase in southern Texas throughout the afternoon as an alternative of the morning to permit for a daylight splashdown within the Indian Ocean. Previous to that, SpaceX stated that Ship will “deliberately fly at the next angle of assault within the closing section of descent, purposefully stressing the bounds of flap management to achieve knowledge on future touchdown profiles.”

SpaceX stated this would be the final of the Block 1 model of the Ship higher stage that can fly, stating that future variations, starting with Flight 7, would characteristic “important upgrades together with redesigned ahead flaps, bigger propellant tanks, and the newest era tiles and secondary thermal safety layers as we proceed to iterate in direction of a completely reusable warmth protect.”

Constructing on booster classes

One of many large objectives for Flight 6 is replicating the success of catching the Tremendous Heavy booster on its return to the launch web site. The corporate would seemingly additionally need to attain that milestone with extra confidence than the earlier go round as properly.

In audio unintentionally shared by SpaceX Founder Elon Musk throughout a livestream of the online game “Diablo IV,” SpaceX workers present a technical debrief of Flight 5, starting with, as one worker described it, “scary shit that occurred and what we’re doing about it.”

“On the touchdown burn, we had a misconfigured spin gasoline help that didn’t have fairly the suitable ramp up time for mentioning spin strain and we had been one second away from that tripping and telling the rocket to abort and attempt to crash into the bottom subsequent to the tower,” a SpaceX worker stated within the audio posted to X, previously Twitter, on Oct. 25.

“Wow! Yikes,” Musk replied.

They mentioned whether or not they need to’ve delayed the launch by not less than one other day to do extra opinions, however one worker stated even with that “I don’t know if we might’ve discovered this one,” referencing the difficulty that cropped up.

“We had been scared about the truth that we had 100 aborts that weren’t tremendous trivial,” one other worker stated. “We didn’t do pretty much as good of a assessment as we did for pre-Flight 1 after we had been in an identical threat posture. We spent a load of time as a management crew going by each final element, actually arguing it a number of instances.”



One worker described having extra management over the timeline of attending to Flight 6 as notable, since they weren’t ready on FAA approval within the lead as much as launch.

“We’re making an attempt to do an inexpensive stability of seed and threat mitigation on the booster, particularly,” an worker stated.

One other worker additionally pointed to the harm seen to one of many chines close to the bottom of the Tremendous Heavy booster. One of many workers heard on the audio stated a number of the margins regarding the spot welding on the chine had been a priority pre-launch.

“We wouldn’t have predicted the precise proper place, however this cowl that ripped off was proper on prime of a bunch of the single-point failure valves that should work throughout the touchdown burn,” the SpaceX worker stated. “Fortunately, none of these in harnessing obtained broken, however we ripped this large cowl off over some actually crucial gear proper as (the) touchdown burn was beginning. Now we have a plan to deal with that.”

The mistakenly shared audio cuts off shortly after this level, so there’s not a variety of perception presently as to what SpaceX’s plan is to deal with the chine subject, however the firm did broadly deal with the enhancements to the Tremendous Heavy booster in its prelaunch assertion on its web site.

“{Hardware} upgrades for this flight add extra redundancy to booster propulsion techniques, improve structural energy at key areas, and shorten the timeline to dump propellants from the booster following a profitable catch,” SpaceX wrote. “Mission designers additionally up to date software program controls and commit standards for the booster’s launch and return.”

Like with Flight 5, SpaceX stated it is going to abort a booster catch try within the occasion that “distinct automobile and pad standards” aren’t met prior to creating the try. In that situation, they might carry out a powered descent over the Gulf of Mexico. The Flight 6 flight director can be accountable for making the ultimate name.

“If this command is just not despatched previous to the completion of the boostback burn, or if automated well being checks present unacceptable situations with Tremendous Heavy or the tower, the booster will default to a trajectory that takes it to a touchdown burn and delicate splashdown within the Gulf of Mexico,” SpaceX wrote. “We settle for no compromises on the subject of making certain the protection of the general public and our crew, and the return will solely happen if situations are proper.”

Ramping up cadence

Relying on how completely different this subsequent model of the Ship higher stage is to the present Block 1 variant or how a lot the flight profile and goals could change will seemingly drive how rapidly SpaceX will get again to the launch pad following Flight 6.

Throughout a presentation to the Mars Exploration Program Evaluation Group (MEPAG) on Thursday, Lori Glaze, the performing deputy affiliate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Techniques Improvement Mission Directorate, stated that SpaceX booster catch throughout Flight 5 was an necessary step in direction of its function because the lander for the Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 missions.

“Very profitable and crucial as a significant step in direction of getting us to the Human Touchdown System for Starship as a result of the power to deliver these boosters again to the pad after which to refurbish them and switch them round rapidly will enable SpaceX to truly fly the variety of flights that can be required for us to land and return from the Moon,” Glaze stated.

Previous to Flight 5, Spaceflight Now spoke with Dr. Kent Chojancki, the HLS deputy program supervisor who stated NASA is hoping to see SpaceX ramp as much as a weekly launch cadence from every of its two launch towers down at Starbase in Boca Chica.

He stated that an elevated launch cadence can be wanted as they start the marketing campaign to gas a tanker model of Starship, which can stay on orbit because it receives a number of a great deal of methane and liquid oxygen as an illustration earlier than the uncrewed Moon touchdown flight.

“Our first, subsequent large milestone is the long-duration (orbital flight) and propellant switch. That’s the first take a look at that we now have not mandated, but it surely’s the primary take a look at that may be a SpaceX-proposed milestone again to NASA, and the design assessment that comes from that,” Chojnacki stated. “So, the primary time that we get to essentially interrogate that form of knowledge and perceive the boil off, perceive the long-duration functionality of the Ship and perceive now a lot is being transferred on that’s going to be throughout that take a look at.”

That on-orbit fueling marketing campaign is anticipated to start someday round March 2025, he stated.