Starship's sixth flight test

On Monday, November 18 at 13:31 CEST, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida on a geosynchronous orbit mission NSIL GSAT-N2.

This was the 19th flight of the Falcon 9 first stage launch vehicle supporting this mission, which previously carried SES-22, ispace's HAKUTO-R MISSION 1, Amazonas-6, CRS-27, Bandwagon-1 and 13 Starlink missions into orbit.

At the beginning of the launch window, the Super Heavy accelerator successfully launched, powering all 33 Raptor engines, and Starship lifted off from the Starbase ramp. After a nominal ascent and stage separation, the launch vehicle successfully transitioned to reentry and began its return to the launch site. During this phase, automated checks of critical hardware on the launch and recovery towers caused an abort of the recovery attempt. The launch vehicle then performed a pre-planned diversion maneuver, landing ignition and soft impact into the Gulf of Mexico.

Starship completed another successful ascent, putting her on the expected trajectory. The ship successfully ignited one Raptor engine while in space, demonstrating the capability required to perform a deorbit ignition of the ship prior to the launch of full orbital missions. Thanks to live views and telemetry transmitted via Starlink, the ship successfully completed reentry and performed a roll, landing ignition and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Data obtained from numerous thermal protection experiments, as well as successful subsonic speed passes at more aggressive angles of attack, provide invaluable feedback on the behavior of the flight hardware in the flight environment as we seek to potentially recover and intercept the ship.

Starship's sixth flight test, with data and flight insights as its main payload, has once again produced results. The insights gained will directly contribute to improving the reliability of the entire Starship system as we approach full and rapid reusability.

SpaceX/ gnews - RoZ