SpaceX’s Starship’s sixth flight launched today without a second capture landing of the superheavy first stage, but with a dramatic daylight soft landing of Starship’s second stage in the Indian Ocean. there were. And banana.
Today’s mission featured an unusually smooth countdown for an experimental and development flight, with the world’s largest rocket lifting off from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, at 4 p.m. CST for the final moments. The suspension has been lifted.
The ascent proceeded without incident, and the moment of peak aerodynamic stress occurred approximately one minute into the mission, with all but the core of the Super Heavy first stage’s 30 Raptor engines shutting down at 2 minutes and 32 seconds. . Seven seconds later, Starship’s second stage performed a hot stage separation, and Super Heavy continued to ignite its engines while Starship ignited.
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When the starship entered suborbital space orbit, the Super Heavy performed a now regular boostback burn to return to the starbase. However, it was never captured by the Methijira tower system, as the go/no-go system of health checks and the final human decision denied capture for safety reasons, and the rocket instead made a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, Starship coasted toward a landing site in the Indian Ocean. The Raptor engine reignited during the flight. This was not required for the mission, but was a test for the orbital return burn that would be needed once Starship became operational and could be reused.
Approximately 47 minutes after liftoff, Starship re-entered the atmosphere, flipped around, positioned its engines downward, and made a powered landing at 1 hour and 5 minutes into the daylight hours. This allowed us to get more information than just spectacular footage. For SpaceX engineers.
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The objective of the mission was the final flight of Starship’s Block 1, and Flight 7 witnessed the first flight of an improved Block 2, which carried twice the payload. Incidentally, Flight 6 witnessed the first actual payload carried by the spacecraft, which consisted of a single banana suspended from a string as a visual indicator when the spacecraft was in zero gravity. Ta.
The mission’s more practical objectives included testing redundant propulsion systems, increasing structural reinforcement, and new software controls. In addition, Starship was equipped with a new heat shield configuration that allowed for the installation of a docking system, which is necessary when transporting fuel to an orbital supply base. The new shield also comes close to being able to accommodate the steeper reentry angles that aircraft would have to maneuver during an actual capture landing.
SpaceX said preparations for Mission 7 will take longer than the period between Flights 5 and 6 due to the transition to a new version of Starship.
It has not been announced what kind of fruit will be included.
Source: SpaceX
