SpaceX launches sixth Starship but aborts booster landing

BREMEN, Germany — SpaceX launched its Starship vehicle on its sixth test flight Nov. 19 but called off a planned landing of the Super Heavy booster back at the launch site.

The Starship/Super Heavy vehicle lifted off at 5 p.m. Eastern from SpaceX’s Starbase test site at Boca Chica, Texas. Liftoff took place at the opening of a 30-minute launch window with no problems reported during the countdown. Among the guests at the launch was President-elect Donald Trump, who has maintained close ties with SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk since the election two weeks ago.

The Super Heavy booster, known as Booster 13, separated from the Starship upper stage about two minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff. The booster started its return to the launch site but, a little more than a minute later, controllers announced “booster offshore divert,” meaning that the booster would not return to the launch pad.

SpaceX didn’t specify the condition with the booster that required it to divert. Instead, the booster made a powered “landing” in the Gulf of Mexico just offshore of the launch site, tipping over and exploding seconds later. It was at least a minor setback for SpaceX after the company was able to successfully “catch” the booster back at the launch tower on the previous launch Oct. 13.

The booster, though, did successfully put the Starship upper stage, known as Ship 31, onto a suborbital trajectory. During its time in space, SpaceX briefly reignited one of the vehicle’s Raptor engines, a test of that capability needed for deorbit burns on later missions.

Starship then performed a reentry over the Indian Ocean. Before the flight, the company said it was changing the reentry profile, “purposefully stressing the limits of flap control” among other changes, and also was using an older version of the thermal protection system than the previous flight.

“Do not be surprised if this is not a smooth flight to splashdown today. We are intentionally looking for how far we can push and discover the vehicle’s true limits as we plan for future ship return and catch,” Kate Tice, one of the hosts of the SpaceX webcast, said. SpaceX plans to eventually return Starship to the launch site with a catch like that used for the Super Heavy booster.

Starship made it through reentry intact, although with some apparent damage to a flap and other parts of the thermal protection system. The vehicle made a powered soft landing in the ocean 65 and a half minutes after liftoff, tipping over on its side and floating on the surface. The shift in launch time from morning to afternoon meant that the splashdown took place in daylight hours in the Indian Ocean, allowing for better video coverage of Starship’s return.

SpaceX is incorporating upgrades into the next Starship upper stage, the company said on the launch webcast. That includes stretching the vehicle for larger propellant tanks, increasing the amount of payload on the vehicle from 1,200 to 1,500 tons. The forward flaps, used to control the vehicle during reentry, are smaller and in a different location to provide greater protection from the heat of reentry. The company did not provide an estimated date for a launch.

SpaceX was able to perform this flight just a little more than a month after the previous flight because the company did not need to modify its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration. The license issued by the FAA for the Flight 5 mission also approved this Flight 6 mission because the limited changes for Flight 6 were deemed “within the scope of what has been previously analyzed,” the FAA stated in October when it issues the license.