SpaceX's Elon Musk has shared key watch items for Starship Flight 6, which is scheduled to take off from Boca Chica, Texas, later today. Starship Flight 6 comes a month after Flight 5 successfully ended in a tower catch for the 232-feet-tall Super Heavy booster and a soft splashdown for the upper-stage Starship spacecraft in the Indian Ocean.
According to Musk, the key objectives for Flight 6 will be restarting the Raptor engines in the vacuum of space, landing the ship in daylight in the Indian Ocean, a steeper angle of reentry for the upper stage Starship and a more intensive booster catch than Flight 5.
Most Of SpaceX's Key Objectives For Starship Flight 6 Involve Upper Stage Starship Spacecraft
From Starship's first integrated flight test last year to Flight 6 today, SpaceX has gradually increased the ambition behind its test objectives. Starship Flight 1 simply aimed at getting the rocket off of the pad, with subsequent flights aiming at soft splashdowns of the booster and ship. These culminated with the remarkable tower catch in Flight 5, and with one complex operation under its belt, SpaceX is now focused on the upper stage Starship spacecraft.
In a detailed post, SpaceX shared that it will fly the second stage Starship spacecraft at a much steeper angle during reentry to test its flap endurance. The firm added that not only has it introduced a secondary thermal protection system, which is most likely an added layer below the heat shield, but it is also flying certain regions of the ship without the heat shield to test hardware for future catch tests.
SpaceX will also attempt to reignite a Raptor engine in space during Starship Flight 6, a crucial test that will provide data for future Starship interplanetary missions, such as those to the Moon and Mars.
Now, in an X post before Flight 6, Musk has confirmed that these will be Starship Flight 6's primary test objectives. According to him, "1. Restart of Raptor engines in vacuum. 2. Daylight landing of the ship. 3. Higher peak heating (steeper) reentry. 4. Faster/harder booster catch," are the key watch out points for SpaceX during Flight 6. Along with these, the firm is also testing "thousands of small design changes," shared the executive.
These changes include the aforementioned thermal protection layers and regions for catch hardware on the upper stage Starship. While the ship will be the star of the show today, SpaceX has also made several changes to the booster. According to the firm, these "additional redundancy to booster propulsion systems, increase structural strength at key areas, and shorten the timeline to offload propellants from the booster following a successful catch."
While Starship Flight 5 successfully caught the 232-foot-tall rocket booster with the tower arms, the catch was far from perfect. SpaceX's live stream showed regions at the bottom of the rocket, called chimes, on fire as it approached the launch tower. Whether the booster propulsion system "redundancy" on Flight 6 covers this anomaly is uncertain. However, throughout the Starship test campaign, Raptor engine fires have been a problem for SpaceX, and during Flight 5, their nozzles turned red hot as the booster cut through the air for its maiden tower catch.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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