SpaceX plans to launch Starship Flight 6 on November 18th – Spaceflight Now

Less than a month after launching its Starship rocket and receiving the booster rocket, SpaceX is planning a sixth test flight of its gleaming stainless steel rocket, which stands nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall.

The company announced Nov. 18 as its planned launch date on Wednesday, along with lessons learned from Flight 5 and mission objectives for Flight 6.

Unlike every other mission launch, this time SpaceX did not have to rely on the timing of the launch, which was based on regulatory approval. When the Federal Aviation Administration approved the mission for Flight 5, it also approved the company's plan for Flight 6.

“The FAA has determined that the changes requested by SpaceX for Flight 6 are within the scope of what was previously analyzed,” the FAA wrote in an Oct. 12 statement. “Any changes to Flight 6’s approved scope of operations requested by SpaceX may require further FAA evaluation.”

Flight 6 will largely be a repeat of Flight 5, with another suborbital flight and a splashdown of the ship's upper stage in the Indian Ocean. However, the mission will include some key differences.



This time, SpaceX is reviving a mission milestone from Flight 3 with the intent of demonstrating the re-ignition of one of the Raptor vacuum engines during the rocket's coast phase. That objective was abandoned on this mission when the missile began rolling much more aggressively than intended.

“Starship did not attempt to perform its planned relight of a single Raptor engine in orbit due to the vehicle's roll rates during coast,” SpaceX said in a statement after the March 14 launch.

With two successful shore phases during recent flights, SpaceX said this test is now within reach and will serve to “demonstrate the capabilities required to perform a ship deorbit burn prior to orbital missions.”

Flight 6 is a suborbital mission and again there will be no payload on board the rocket. The mission will instead serve as a teaching tool for SpaceX for further iterations of the vehicle. Some of these lessons will come from a better understanding of the ship's thermal protection system.

“Several thermal protection experiments and operational changes will test the limits of Starship’s capabilities and generate flight data to inform capture and reuse plans,” SpaceX wrote on Wednesday. “The flight test will examine new secondary thermal protection materials and remove entire sections of heat shield tiles on both sides of the vessel in locations that will be investigated for future craft arresting gear.”

Unlike previous tests, Flight 6 will depart from the starbase in south Texas in the afternoon instead of the morning to allow for a daylight water splash in the Indian Ocean. Previously, SpaceX said the ship will “intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack during the final phase of the descent, specifically pushing the limits of flap control to gain data on future landing profiles.”

SpaceX said this is the last Block 1 version of the ship's upper stage to fly, and stated that future versions, starting with Flight 7, will feature “significant improvements, including redesigned front doors, larger fuel tanks and next-generation tiling.” and secondary thermal protection layers as we continue to work toward a fully reusable heat shield.”

Building on booster lessons

One of the big goals for Flight 6 is to repeat the success of capturing the Super Heavy booster on its return to the launch site. The company also likely wants to reach this milestone with more confidence than its previous attempt.

In an audio recording unintentionally shared by SpaceX founder Elon Musk during a livestream of the video game “Diablo IV,” SpaceX employees provide a technical debrief of Flight 5, beginning with, as one employee described it, “scary shit that happened.” and what we are.” do about it.”

“On landing, we had a misconfigured spin gas assist that didn't quite have the right ramp-up time to increase the spin pressure, and we were just a second away from it tripping and telling the rocket to go abort and attempt to crash into the ground next to the tower,” a SpaceX employee said in the audio recording posted Oct. 25 on X, formerly Twitter.

“Wow! Yikes,” replied Musk.

They debated whether they should have delayed the launch for at least another day to conduct additional checks, but one employee still said, “I don't know if we would have found this one,” citing the problem that arose.

“We were afraid that we had 100 abortions that were not entirely trivial,” another employee said. “We didn't do as good a check as we did before Flight 1, when we were in a similar risk situation. We spent a lot of time as a leadership team going over every little detail and actually arguing about it multiple times.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-PSODNowJY

One employee described the increased control over the schedule for Flight 6 as notable because he did not have to wait for FAA approval in advance of takeoff.

“We are trying to achieve an appropriate balance between seeds and risk reduction, especially when it comes to booster vaccinations,” said an employee.

Another employee also pointed out the damage found on one of the machines near the base of the Super Heavy booster. One of the employees heard in the audio recording said that some of the edges related to the spot welds on the chin were a concern before launch.

“We wouldn't have predicted exactly the right spot, but this torn cover was directly over a series of single-point failure valves that must function during landing,” the SpaceX official said. “Luckily none of those in the harness were damaged, but we tore off this huge cover over some really important equipment just as the landing fire started. We have a plan to address this.”

The erroneously shared audio cuts out shortly after this point, so there isn't much insight at this time about how SpaceX plans to address the China issue, but the company did elaborate on the improvements to the Super Heavy in its pre-launch statement on the matter -Booster received website.

“Hardware upgrades for this flight provide additional redundancy to the booster propulsion systems, increase structural strength in key areas, and reduce the time to unload propellants from the booster after a successful capture,” SpaceX wrote. “Mission designers also updated the software controls and commit criteria for launch and return of the launch vehicle.”

As with Flight 5, SpaceX said it would abort a booster capture attempt if “clear vehicle and pad criteria” were not met before the attempt. In this scenario, they would perform a powered descent over the Gulf of Mexico. The flight director of Flight 6 is responsible for the final call.

“If this command is not sent before the boostback burn completes, or if automatic health checks reveal unacceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the turret, the booster will default to a trajectory that will lead it to a landing burn and gentle mid-air water jettison.” Golf from Mexico,” SpaceX wrote. “We will not accept compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team and the return will only take place when the conditions are right.”

Increase cadence

Depending on how different this next version of the ship's upper stage is from the current Block 1 variant, or how much the flight profile and destinations may change, it will likely depend on how quickly SpaceX returns to the launch pad after Flight 6.

During a presentation to the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) on Thursday, Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator of NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said the capture of the SpaceX boosters during Flight 5 was an important step toward their role as landers be for the missions Artemis 3 and Artemis 4.

“Very successful and very important as a big step towards the human spacecraft landing system, because the ability to bring these boosters back to the launch site and then quickly overhaul and retool them will allow SpaceX to actually fly that many.” Flights that will be required for landing and return from the moon,” Glaze said.

Ahead of Flight 5, Spaceflight Now spoke with Dr. Kent Chojancki, HLS's deputy program manager, said NASA hopes SpaceX will ramp up to a weekly launch frequency from each of its two launch towers down at the Starbase in Boca Chica.

He said an increased launch frequency would be needed as it begins refueling a tanker version of Starship, which will remain in orbit as it receives multiple loads of methane and liquid oxygen for demonstration purposes before the unmanned lunar landing flight.

“Our first and next major milestone is long-duration flight (orbital flight) and fuel transfer. This is the first test that we did not commission, but it is the first test that is a milestone for NASA proposed by SpaceX and the resulting design review,” Chojnacki said. “The first time we've really interrogated this type of data and understood the boil-off, we understand the long-term capability of the ship and now we understand that there's a lot of transfer going on during this test.”

This in-orbit refueling campaign is expected to begin sometime in March 2025, he said.