After launching three Falcon 9 rockets in less than 20 hours, SpaceX is preparing to use its fourth and final active launchpad in the United States to launch its massive Starship rocket.
The mission, dubbed Flight 6, is set to be the fourth time SpaceX launches the nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle in 2024 and the sixth test flight of the fully integrated rocket in program history.
Liftoff of the suborbital flight from Pad 1 at Starbase at Boca Chica Beach, Texas, is set for 4 p.m. CST (5 p.m. EST, 2200 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will begin joint live coverage alongside LabPadre beginning about 1.5 hours before launch.
The mission will feature another attempt by SpaceX to catch its Super Heavy booster back at the launch pad using its ‘Mechazilla’ tower. The launch team will closely track data on both the rocket and the tower before making a call on if they are in a good position to catch the 71 m (232 ft) first stage.
The decision will come down to a command by the mission’s flight director.
“If this command is not sent prior to the completion of the boostback burn, or if automated health checks show unacceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the tower, the booster will default to a trajectory that takes it to a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico,” SpaceX wrote in a prelaunch statement.
“We accept no compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team, and the return will only take place if conditions are right.”
In audio unintentionally shared by Elon Musk during a live stream of the video game “Diablo IV,” SpaceX employees described how close the catch during Flight 5 came to being a potential failure instead of the success seen on Oct. 13.
“On the landing burn, we had a misconfigured spin gas support that didn’t have quite the right ramp up time for bringing up spin pressure and we were one second away from that tripping and telling the rocket to abort and try to crash into the ground next to the tower,” a SpaceX employee said in the audio posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Oct. 25.
“Wow! Yikes,” Musk replied in the audio.
In a prelaunch interview with Spaceflight Now, NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, the assistant-to-the-chief of the Astronaut Office, said he and his colleagues are hoping SpaceX can continue proving out the viability of its concept for catching and refurbishing its Super Heavy boosters.
He said that ability is key to achieving the goals of the Human Landing System component of the Artemis program. Starship is designed to be the lander for the third and fourth Artemis missions.
“One data point was great. It would be great to see this be repeatable and see they’ve got some longevity on the concept. And then, it’ll be trying to catch the Starship tankers as well,” Bresnik said. “So, catch the first stage, catch the tanker up top, (then) it’ll be refueling.
“The biggest milestone were looking at next year is to see how those tankers can refuel the propellant Starship in Earth orbit and transfer that, you know, cryogenic fuel in space to fill up the depot that’s going to be sitting up there that the HLS Starship has to get its gas from after it launches because it can’t launch fully fueled.”
The Ship upper stage, tail number S31, will soar about halfway around the world, achieving near orbital velocity. During the voyage, SpaceX will attempt to relight one of the three Raptor vacuum engines.
Demonstrating this capability will be crucial to showing that Starship is capable of performing a deorbit burn following future orbital missions and not becoming a large mass of space junk.
At the end of a coast phase lasting a little more than an hour, S31 will attempt to perform a soft water landing, as it did during Flight 5, in the Indian Ocean. The difference this time around is that it will reach that part of the world in daylight, which is why SpaceX pushed the launch time at Starbase to the afternoon.
“Several thermal protection experiments and operational changes will test the limits of Starship’s capabilities and generate flight data to inform plans for ship catch and reuse,” SpaceX wrote. “The flight test will assess new secondary thermal protection materials and will have entire sections of heat shield tiles removed on either side of the ship in locations being studied for catch-enabling hardware on future vehicles.
“The ship also will intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final phase of descent, purposefully stressing the limits of flap control to gain data on future landing profiles.”
