SpaceX just about nails Starship test flight 13

science

Super Heavy booster had a super heavy landing, but other reusability tech did the trick

The 13^th flight of SpaceX’s Starship made it off the launchpad on Friday and ticked off just about everything on the company’s to-do list.

After delays and engine replacements, Elon Musk’s colosso-launcher took to the skies at beer-o’clock on Friday evening – 5:51PM Texas time.

One hour, five minutes and 21 seconds later, Starship made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, where it floated after landing.

SpaceX says it was able to gather critical data on the performance of Starship’s heatshield, and that the craft made “a dynamic banking move to mimic the trajectory that future missions returning to Starbase will fly.”

Gathering data on Starship’s heatshield performance will help SpaceX ensure the craft is re-usable. Simulating missions that land at Starbase, SpaceX’s Texas home, builds toward future missions that launch and land at the same facility, speeding turnarounds for re-usable hardware.

The test flight also saw SpaceX test a new routine for de-orbiting the Super Heavy booster used to hoist Starship into space. “The booster successfully completed the high thrust portion of the boostback burn with all 33 engines, the first time with a Super Heavy V3, before ending the burn early,” SpaceX said. “It attempted to relight its engines for the landing burn, with a subset successfully igniting before experiencing a hard splashdown in the Gulf.”

That part of the mission didn’t go perfectly, as SpaceX hoped for a softer landing and more engines lighting to make it possible.

Once Super Heavy and Starship separated, the latter vehicle used its six Raptor engines to reach desired speed and orbit. It then deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites. SpaceX crew verified the sats worked and half a dozen of them got a look at Starship’s heatshield. While the satellites were functional, SpaceX did not intend them to form part of the Starlink constellation and allowed them to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. Or as the company’s mission report put it, the satellites “demised upon reentry approximately 20 minutes after deployment.”

Starship performed one more trick on its way back to Earth, by starting one of its Raptor engines while coasting through space. The success of that test again demonstrated tech that will be needed for future missions, in this case flights that push Starship into sustainable orbit – or allow it to reach a trajectory capable of reaching the Moon, as NASA envisages will be the case for future Artemis missions that land humans on Earth’s permanent natural satellite.

SpaceX boss Elon Musk said he hopes the next Starship test flight will see the Super Heavy booster caught by robot arms at Starbase, another step towards improved reusability and turnaround times between flights. ®