For the first time, SpaceX not only launched its mammoth Starship but also returned the booster to the launch site and captured it using a pair of enormous “chopsticks”
Sunday morning, the Starship development program’s fifth test flight was conducted at the company’s Starbase site in southeast Texas. The nearly 400-foot-tall Starship is the focal point of SpaceX’s stated goal to establish life on other planets and NASA’s ambitious Artemis initiative to reintroduce humans to the moon’s surface.
The Starship vehicle, which comprises an upper stage (also known as the “Starship”) and a Super Heavy booster, is intended for rapid reuse by SpaceX. However, this necessitates demonstrating the ability to recover both stages and promptly rehabilitate them for future flights.
Therefore, it is logical that the fifth flight test’s primary objectives were to attempt the first “catch” of the Super Heavy projectile at the launch site and execute an on-target Starship reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
The latter objective had already been accomplished: SpaceX successfully executed a controlled reentry and splashdown of the Starship upper stage during the most recent test mission in June. However, the booster capture, as the company stated in a blog post, would be “singularly novel” in the history of rocketry.
The Falcon 9 booster landings on autonomous vessels and terrestrial landing zones, which are now routine, are the closest analogy.
During today’s launch, the booster slowed to a hover and delicately positioned itself within the zone of two “chopstick” arms attached to the launch tower. Afterward, the arms supported the booster, which closed around it after the engines ceased to operate.
The capture is visible at approximately 40 minutes into the SpaceX test video. Starship continued to ascend into orbit after the booster detachment and capture, but it exploded and splashed down in the Indian Ocean (SpaceX had not intended to recover the spacecraft).
In a website update, SpaceX stated that the capture attempt was contingent upon the fulfillment of “thousands” of criteria that demonstrated the vehicle and pad’s healthy systems.
This test was also conducted earlier than anticipated. The Federal Aviation Administration had previously stated that it did not anticipate issuing a modified launch license for this test before late November.
SpaceX was deeply offended by that timeline, which prompted the company to criticize the regulator’s inefficiency repeatedly. However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declared on Saturday that the launch had been authorized.
In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declared that SpaceX had satisfied all safety, environmental, and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight.
It is important to note that the authorization also includes approval for the next test flight, as the FAA stated that “the changes requested by SpaceX for Flight 6 are within the scope of what has been previously analyzed.”
SpaceX engineers have maintained an exceptionally active schedule while anticipating the issuance of this launch license:
In the past few months, they have conducted a multitude of tests on the launch tower, replaced the entire thermal protection system of the rocket with newer tiles and a secondary ablative layer, and updated the ship’s software for reentry.
This week, engineers successfully completed the propellant loading tests and the water deluge system testing of the launch platform. The system is designed to safeguard the pad from the intense fire of the 33 Raptor engines in the booster.
The company intends to return the Starship upper stage to the landing site in the future; however, we will have to wait until future test launches to observe this.
The company asserts that “we are on the brink of showcasing techniques that are fundamental to Starship’s fully and rapidly reusable design, as each flight builds upon the knowledge gained from the previous one and tests improvements in hardware and operations across every aspect of Starship.”
“We will rapidly bring Starship online and revolutionize humanity’s capacity to access space by continuing to push our hardware in a flight environment as safely and frequently as possible.”
The successful test flight has been reflected in the amended report, which was contributed to by Anthony Ha.
