Unless you are not at all interested in the conquest of space and SpaceX, it is impossible in recent weeks to have missed the historic progress made by Elon Musk's firm. Last mid-October, during the fifth test flight of its Starship megarocket, the company managed to catch up with the Starship's super-heavy B12 booster a few minutes after its launch. If you missed this impressive moment and want to relive it live, good news: a new test will take place very soon.
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Towards ever more reuse of components
To follow this sixth test flight (called IFT-6), meet at the earliest on November 18 from 11 p.m. (Paris time). SpaceX will obviously broadcast the event and will start the broadcast approximately 30 minutes before takeoff. Of course, this date is not set in stone, several elements could lead SpaceX to delay the takeoff of its machine intended one day to reach the Moon as part of NASA's Artemis mission.
For the record, the Starship is currently the most powerful and largest rocket in the world (122 m). Both its 51m top (the Ship) and its 71m booster are powered by SpaceX's Raptor engines. If everything goes as planned (which has not always been the case, the space firm preferring to break in order to learn faster), SpaceX should once again use the arms of the launch tower, nicknamed Mechazilla, to catch up with the booster B13 in controlled descent. The opportunity to test software modifications, while Ship S31 could complete an orbit for the first time and put its revised thermal protection to the test.
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