Less than a month has passed since the historic fifth flight of SpaceX’s Starship, during which the company caught the booster with mechanical arms back at the launch pad in Texas.
Now, another test flight could come as soon as Nov. 18, the company announced Wednesday.
Thus, the company was able to press ahead on a sixth test flight if it flew a similar profile.
However, the booster hardware and software will be modified with learnings from the test flight last month.
Final flight of the first Starship The five previous flights of Starship, dating back to April 2023, have all launched near dawn from South Texas.
It has been less than a month since SpaceX’s Starship made its historic fifth flight, in which the company used mechanical arms to capture the booster back at the launch pad in Texas. Now, a second test flight might occur as early as November. 18 on Wednesday, the business declared.
SpaceX was spared an anomaly investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration after the Starship first stage was successfully recovered with “chopsticks” last month and the upper stage splashed down on target halfway around the world. Therefore, if the company flew a similar profile on a sixth test flight, it was able to proceed.
That’s exactly what SpaceX intends to do, though the flight plan will include a few noteworthy changes.
Setting up a Raptor in orbit.
SpaceX said in a statement on its website that the first stage, called Super Heavy, would follow the same path as the October 13 fifth test flight. The hardware and software for the booster will be changed, though, in light of the lessons learned from last month’s test flight.
The hardware upgrades for this flight, according to the company, “increase structural strength at critical locations, add additional redundancy to booster propulsion systems, and shorten the timeline to offload propellants from the booster following a successful catch.”. For the launch and return of the booster, mission designers also modified the commit criteria and software controls. “..”.
Although it will include an in-flight relight of one of the rocket’s six engines, the Starship upper stage will likewise fly the same suborbital trajectory that it accomplished in October. This marks the next step in Starship’s development and is essential to enabling orbital missions to safely reenter Earth’s atmosphere, as Ars clarified in a feature last week.
With the successful demonstration of the ability to re-relight Raptors in space, SpaceX can now launch Starship on commercial missions and probably pave the way for Starlink launches, which could happen as early as the first half of next year. Only Starship’s large payload can accommodate these larger Starlink satellites, which will offer direct-to-cell Internet access.
Additionally, new tiles and other components of the vehicle’s heat shield will be evaluated by the company during Starship’s upcoming flight.
According to a statement from the company, “a number of thermal protection experiments and operational modifications will push the boundaries of Starship’s capabilities and produce flight data to inform plans for ship catch and reuse.”. In the flight test, entire sections of heat shield tiles on either side of the ship will be removed in areas being researched for catch-enabling hardware on future vehicles. Additionally, new secondary thermal protection materials will be evaluated. Additionally, in order to gather information on future landing profiles, the ship will deliberately stress the limits of flap control by flying at a higher angle of attack during the last phase of descent. “,”.
The first Starship’s last flight.
Since April 2023, Starship has made five flights, all of which departed from South Texas close to dawn. A late-afternoon launch window will be sought by the company for the next mission, allowing the vehicle to reenter the Indian Ocean during the day.
The next generation of the Starship vehicle will have larger propellant tanks, updated tiles, secondary thermal protection layers, and redesigned forward flaps. SpaceX’s update also confirms that this will be the final flight of the original model.
While it’s impressive that the vehicle has achieved a near-monthly cadence of Starship flights in just the second year of operation, it’s also crucial if SpaceX hopes to realize the full potential of a rocket that requires multiple refueling launches to support Starship missions to the Moon or Mars.
The announcement was made on Wednesday, the day after the US presidential election in which voters elected Donald Trump to a second term. It is noteworthy that SpaceX founder Elon Musk made a concerted effort to help Trump win a second term.
Musk polarized a sizable portion of the US populace and political elite with his highly contentious political interventions. But Musk’s strategy paid off, as Trump’s victory will probably hasten Starship’s development and make it more crucial to the country’s space exploration efforts.
But since SpaceX was largely reliant on the company’s hardware, software, and ground systems being ready, it did not require official regulatory approval to proceed with this sixth attempt, so the timing of this launch announcement is probably coincidental.
