The fourth test flight of the SpaceX Starship super-heavy launch vehicle was much more successful than the previous ones — both stages completed their missions and successfully re-entered the atmosphere (although the second stage was damaged) The launch was broadcast live in the account SpaceX on X/Twitter.
The Starship in full Super Heavy configuration (the height of the entire system exceeds 120 meters) was launched from the pad at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, at 15:50 Kyiv time on June 6, 2024.
Approximately 3 minutes after the launch, the Starship superheavy launch vehicle with 32 ignited engines (one failed) reached the required altitude, where a successful separation took place according to the «hot» scheme: most of the engines of the Super Heavy accelerator turned off and the engines of the ship itself started working at the same time.
This is the third time the Starship team has demonstrated hot undocking of the stages.
Subsequently, the first stage successfully performed the Boostback Burn maneuver (the same way Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy stages are returned) and entered the landing trajectory, igniting its engines in a few minutes (only 12 were activated) for a soft landing on the water in the Gulf of Mexico.
After the successful ignition of all 6 engines, the “starship” itself continued to climb along the planned trajectory. It reached an altitude of more than 150 km, successfully entered Earth orbit, and turned off its engines.
At about the 40th minute after launch, Starship began the re-entry procedure (very spectacular, see the video below) — despite the fact that there were some losses (the heat shielding tiles partially crumbled and the swimmer was burned), the ship made a successful turn and eventually landed in the Indian Ocean.
«Despite the loss of many tiles and a damaged fin, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!» — Elon Musk wrote on X.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson also congratulated the SpaceX team:
«We are one step closer to returning humanity to the Moon via Artemis, and then looking to Mars».
For Elon Musk, Starship is a spacecraft that will transport people to Mars, and NASA primarily expects to use it as a lunar lander that will deliver astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. In the short term, SpaceX also plans to use Starship to deploy the next generation of Starlink Internet satellites.
Starship — is the largest and most powerful rocket system in history, reaching 120 meters in height. The booster itself has the largest number of engines (33) ever used in a launch vehicle. Another feature of Starship is its potential reusability, which can reduce the cost of delivering payloads to orbit (according to Musk’s forecasts, sending 100 tons of cargo into space one day could cost less than $10 million).
Starship will eventually have to perform many more test flights (Musk announced at least 6 in 2024 alone) before it can start real work (including the goal of landing both stages on the launch pad), but in general, all 4 flights (and especially today’s) can be called successful — now we are waiting for the analysis of the data from the SpaceX team.