The fourth launch of a Starship, SpaceX’s megarocket, on June 6, 2024, was an almost perfect success for the private space company. All of its assigned objectives were effectively fulfilled with a simulated landing of the first stage, aka the Super Heavy Booster, in the Gulf of Mexico, and the second stage, dubbed Ship, in the Indian Ocean after a controlled atmospheric entry.
Controlled, certainly, but not without damage, one of the fins having started to melt under the intense heat caused by contact with the air. The path that will allow the Starship to reach the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program remains long, but Musk intends to get there as quickly as possible. Thus, the tycoon implied in his own way, on his social network X (formerly Twitter), that he wanted to try the experiment again at the end of July.
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The controlled landing of the Super Heavy Booster on June 6.
© SpaceX
A first tower catch ?
For this fifth test flight of a Starship, Elon Musk intends to try for the first time one of the objectives he aims to accomplish: a “tower catch”, understand the catching of the Ship on its return to Earth by mechanical arms arranged on the launch tower, poetically named Mechazilla. This project is not a fad, but an essential part of the SpaceX vision of space launches, which aims to reuse launchers to reduce costs in the long term. This is already the case with the firm’s famous Falcon 9, which carries out controlled landings on a barge and reuse up to around a hundred flights per year.
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Putting the heat shield to the test
However, if SpaceX wishes to test its ability to catch up with its rockets on the ground, this objective is not essential for the first major mission of the Starship, which must transport humans to the Moon as part of the Artemis program. Indeed, the flight plan for the lunar mission does not involve recovery of the launcher. On the other hand, no mission, lunar or not, can seriously be undertaken with a Starship if the capabilities of its thermal shield to resist the intense heat generated by atmospheric entry are not properly demonstrated. And on this subject, the Starship has not yet fully proven itself.
Replacement of heat shield tiles.
© Starship Gazer (@StarshipGazer / X)
Indeed, during previous flights, many of the thousands of protective tiles that pave the second floor of the Ship have simply come loose. For the fifth test, SpaceX announced that it wanted to simply replace the tiles used until now with new ones deemed to be twice as resistant. The underlying layer of ablative materials will also be modified in order to be better able to withstand the heat if tiles fail again. According to Elon Musk, this change in materials could pose a problem for future reuse, even if he does not explain the reasons.
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