Watch SpaceX launch sixth Starship test flight

SpaceX will launch its sixth test flight of its Starship rocket on Tuesday, as the company looks to continue development of the massive vehicle.

The company has a 30-minute window, from 5 pm ET to 5:30 pm ET, to launch the Starship at its secret “Starbase” facility near Brownsville, Texas. If SpaceX is unable to launch in that window due to weather or technical reasons, the company will postpone the attempt to a later date.

There will be no people on board the Starship.

Assuming the launch goes according to plan, the Starship will reach space and travel a long distance around Earth before re-entering space and splashing down in the Indian Ocean. Additionally, the “Super Heavy” rocket booster will return after separating from the Starship and land in the arms of the company’s launch tower.

As with each previous test flight, SpaceX intends to continue development by testing additional Starship capabilities, including engine management while in space and testing its heat shield during re-entry.

Additionally, the timing of the evening launch means it will be the first time the Starship has performed in daylight.

SpaceX usually has a group of VIPs to watch Starship launches and, with CEO Elon Musk’s close relationship with President-elect Donald Trump, the sixth flight is no different. Trump is expected to attend Tuesday’s launch, the same time he arrived to watch the first launch of SpaceX astronauts in Florida in 2020 during his first administration.

SpaceX has flown a full complement of Starship rockets on five spaceflight tests so far starting in April 2023, at a steadily increasing pace. Its previous launch last month featured the spectacular first hold of a rocket with more than 20 floors.

After a successful fifth flight, the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that SpaceX was approved to move forward with a sixth flight.

But, like its previous test flight, the fifth launch was not without incident. SpaceX executives, in an audio posted after the launch on social media by Musk, revealed that the Starship’s booster nearly missed takeoff due to a timing problem with one of the rocket’s subsystems.

“We were one second away from that crash and telling the rocket to abort and try to crash into the ground near the tower instead of [landing at] tower — like, you accidentally told a healthy rocket not to try to grab that,” the unidentified person told Musk in the audio.

SpaceX will try to hold the booster again, the company says on its website that it has made hardware improvements to the rocket’s booster to improve reactivity and improve structural strength.

The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to be a new way to fly cargo and people across the Earth. The rocket is also important to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX has won a multibillion-dollar contract to operate a Starship spacecraft as a lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis lunar mission.

Starship is the longest and most powerful rocket ever built. Fully packed into the Super Heavy booster, the Starship stands 397 feet long and nearly 30 feet wide.

The Super Heavy booster, which is 232 feet long, is what starts the rocket’s journey into space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which produce 16.7 million pounds – about 8.8 million pounds of thrust for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which will be launched for the first time in 2022.

The Starship itself, which is 165 feet long, has six Raptor engines – three to be used while in Earth’s atmosphere and three to operate in the vacuum of space.

The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. A full system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant to launch.