SpaceX Starship progress

New flight termination system box designed to enable a quick destruction of the rocket in case an anomaly happens.

Four Starlink antenna fittings present.

New “Remove before flight” covers for the Raptor boost quick disconnects (QDC).

SpaceX skips giant rocket catch on 6th test flight. Flight data didn’t support an attempt. Super Heavy ended up coming down for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico instead, hitting the waves seven minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX also wanted to put Starship’s upper stage through its paces.

The launch sent Ship on the same semi-orbital trajectory that it took on Flight 5, targeting a splashdown in the Indian Ocean off the northwestern coast of Australia about 65 minutes after liftoff. But Ship also achieved some new milestones along the way this time.

For example, Flight 6 carried the first-ever Starship payload — a plush banana onboard Ship, which served as a zero-gravity indicator. (It was not deployed into space.) In addition, Ship briefly re-lit one of its six Raptor engines about 38 minutes into the flight. 

This burn helped show that Ship can perform the maneuvers needed to come back to Earth safely during orbital missions. Indeed, Ship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, just like Super Heavy; SpaceX eventually intends to catch it with the chopstick arms as well, and will likely try to do so on a test flight in the near future. 

Flight 6 also tested modifications to Ship’s heat shield, which protects the vehicle during reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.

“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,” SpaceX wrote in a mission description. “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.”

SpaceX also shifted the launch time for Flight 6, to allow for better observation of Ship’s reentry and splashdown. Flight 5 (and all four of its predecessors) lifted off from Texas in the morning, and Ship came down in darkness on the other side of the world.

The fact that it survived all the way through while flying a lesser-gen heat shield is just absolutely incredible.”