SpaceX has completed its sixth test launch of Starship. The giant rocket took off right on schedule at 16:00 local time on November 19 (01:00 Moscow time on November 20). According to the plan, this flight was supposed to be in many ways similar to the fifth test, but soon after the launch it became clear that SpaceX’s plans had changed.
It was expected that as part of this flight, SpaceX would again try to catch the first stage of Super Heavy with the launcher mechanism – “chopsticks”, as they were unofficially called. But in the end, the accelerator simply sank gently into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Little is known yet about the reasons for the change in plans for the landing of Super Heavy.
SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot only succinctly noted: “We deviated from certain conditions.” Apparently, some kind of malfunction occurred during the flight, which could have prevented the safe landing of the booster on the launch pad, which is why the experts decided not to even try to do it.
In turn, the Starship itself continued to fly in space. At the time of preparation of this material, it was at an altitude of 187 km and moving at a speed of 28,328 km/h. According to the mission plan, the ship should splash down gently in the Indian Ocean. A change from the previous test will be that Starship will attempt to increase the angle of attack during its passage through the atmosphere during the final stage of descent to evaluate flap performance and study different descent scenarios.
In addition, in this test some experiments are being carried out with a heat shield – protective tiles were specially removed in certain areas of the body.
Starship’s Raptor engine burn is complete and Starship has entered a coast phase pic.twitter.com/xJHlg2eDTs
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Finally, unlike past test launches, this time SpaceX fired one of the Raptor engines in a vacuum. After this, the device began its descent to splashdown in the Indian Ocean. This is an important achievement for Starship, because engine operation in space is a critical component of future orbital flights.
We will most likely learn more details about the flight in the morning.