The night was busy for SpaceX, which carried out Tuesday at 4 p.m. in Texas (11 p.m. in France), what will certainly be its last flight of the year with its Super Heavy launcher mounted with the Starship spacecraft. After the 5th flight on October 13, during which SpaceX demonstrated for the first time the ability of the launch tower to “catch up” with Super Heavy in mid-flight, the sixth flight was to confirm the success of the maneuver, while engaging Starship in a new mission: to get closer to orbit, to restart the engines and deorbit the device.
Finally, SpaceX wanted to follow the evolution of the ship's thermal shield, in a lighter configuration, in other words with fewer thermal tiles. Ambition? Prepare Starship for the integration of small fins, which will later allow it to be caught by the launch tower, like Super Heavy.
Super Heavy “exceeded engagement criteria”
Seven minutes after taking off from Starbase, the launch site of SpaceX's heavy launcher in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX's heavy launcher therefore revised its plans and the teams directed it into the Gulf of Mexico, for a return while softness, but followed by an explosion and far from the articulated arms of the launch tower, like last October 13. The teams of the company led by Elon Musk declared that they had “exceeded the commitment criteria”, without giving details for the moment as to the criteria in question, whether it is a question of trajectory , restarting the engines or anything.
Donald Trump, recently elected president, was invited by Elon Musk (who will join his government) to follow this sixth Starship flight. As a show, they had to film a few hours later on the ship's flight over the Indian Ocean.
Starship's new mission
Indeed, as a new main objective on the mission, the flight of Starship, from Texas, towards the Indian Ocean. From the Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of Australia, the SpaceX vessel carried out a unique flight for the occasion.
On board was a stuffed banana, which was intended as a payload to be a witness to weightlessness. SpaceX, however, was content with a suborbital trajectory, but was able to demonstrate the ability of one of the six Raptor engines to re-ignite after 38 minutes of flight. Then, the vessel made a final maneuver to land vertically in the Indian Ocean, 65 minutes after takeoff.
Concerning the study of the thermal resistance of the vessel facing its return to the atmosphere, SpaceX declared in a description of the mission: “The flight test will evaluate new secondary thermal protection materials and remove entire sections of thermal protection tiles from each side of the craft in locations studied for capture hardware on future vehicles. […] The craft will also intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final descent phase, deliberately straining the limits of flap control to obtain data on future landing profiles. »
The last flight of Starship V1 before V2
It should be noted that this sixth flight was also SpaceX's last with the current version (V1) of the Starship. In the next flights, the company will inaugurate Starship V2. Among the changes that will be made to the future ship will be an extension of the vehicle, to accommodate larger fuel tanks, an increase in payload capacity and smaller control flaps.
A ship that we should see very frequently in 2025, since SpaceX plans to fly it once a month. Indeed, more than 25 flights are planned for next year, and with the United States under the governance of Donald Trump, the schedule will be more likely to be kept. The only obstacles could be technical: already between the flight of October 13 and that of November 19, Starbase saw a ballet of supply trucks pass by almost continuously.
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