The fourth test flight of the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built is in the books, and what a dramatic and nail-biting trip for SpaceX it was.
SpaceX launched its Starship megarocket for the fourth time ever today (June 6) at 8:50 a.m. EDT (1250 GMT), sending the 400-foot-tall (122 meters) vehicle aloft from its Starbase site near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas atop a thundering pillar of fire.
There were two main goals today: bring Starship's first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, down for a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, and achieve a controlled reentry of the 165-foot-tall (50 m) upper stage, called Starship or simply Ship. Both the Super Heavy booster and its Ship appeared to make their water landings, sending spectators at SpaceX's mission control at Starbase into a frenzy of cheers.
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"This whole building was going absolutely insane," SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said during live commentary from the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. "When we saw the booster hit the water, I mean, wow."
Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, was thrilled.
"Successful soft landing of the Starship Super Heavy rocket booster!" he wrote on X (formerly Twitter) after splashdown.
The Starship Ship vehicle, meanwhile, appeared to nail its landing burn despite one of its flaps clearly suffering burn-through damage during descent. Live camera views showed the flap's heat shield burn away, covering the the camera with debris, then ultimately cracking the lens.
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Still, the camera came back despite several signal drops, proving each time that Starship was alive. At landing, the Ship appeared to flip as planned and execute its landing burn, SpaceX said.
"Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!" Elon Musk wrote on X later. "Congratulations SpaceX team on an epic achievement!!
The crowd, as you'd expect, went wild.
"It was so loud here," Kate Tice, SpaceX quality systems engineering senior manager, said during live commentary. "I haven't heard the crowd get that loud, probably, since Flight One."
Tice, Huot and SpaceX's Jessie Anderson celebrated the Starship landing by toasting a marshmallow with a Starship-shaped lighter.
Related: Relive SpaceX Starship's 3rd flight test in breathtaking photos
Starship views the fully reusable Starship as a revolutionary advance in spaceflight, one that could make human settlement of the moon and Mars economically feasible at long last.
Indeed, the vehicle was designed with Mars in mind: Its next-gen Raptor engines (33 for Super Heavy and six for Ship) burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane, both of which can be sourced on the Red Planet.
The moon will likely be Starship's first far-flung stop, however. NASA selected the craft as the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration, which aims to establish a research base in the ice-rich south polar region by the end of the 2020s. The current architecture calls for Starship to land NASA astronauts on the moon for the first time in September 2026, on the Artemis 3 mission.
Starship will need to ace many more test flights before it's ready for that landmark mission, but the stainless-steel spacecraft is off to a good start: It has made significant progress on each of its four liftoffs to date.
Starship's two stages failed to separate on its debut flight, which occurred in April 2023. That mission ended with a controlled detonation of the tumbling vehicle just four minutes after liftoff. (And that liftoff blasted a crater beneath Starbase's orbital launch mount, impelling SpaceX to install a water-spewing metal plate as heat-wicking reinforcement.)
Flight 2, in November 2023, achieved stage separation but still ended early; both Ship and Super Heavy had been reduced to swirling bits in Earth's atmosphere by eight minutes after launch.
Starship made a big leap on Flight 3, which launched on March 14 of this year. Stage separation occurred on time, and Super Heavy made it to within 1,650 feet (500 meters) of the Gulf of Mexico's wavetops before breaking apart. Ship, meanwhile, achieved orbital velocity and flew for nearly 50 minutes, finally succumbing to intense frictional heating as it reentered our atmosphere after an uncontrollable roll due to loss of its reaction control system, SpaceX said.
Flight 4 saw yet more improvement, as the Super Heavy made it safely down to the water while the Ship appeared to maintain roll control during flight.
During launch, the Super Heavy booster appeared to fire 32 of its 33 Raptor engines during liftoff, with one engine clearly out in video and telemetry. When the Super Heavy fired its 13-engine landing burn, only 12 engines fired, but the booster still appeared to make its "soft landing" splashdown, SpaceX said.
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If you missed today's liftoff, don't worry: There will probably be many more Starship launches in the near future. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said the company aims to launch six test flights of the megarocket in 2024, which would work out to four more liftoffs in the next six months.
The timeline is not entirely up to SpaceX, of course; regulators such as the Federal Aviation Administration have a say. But, true to its fast-moving ways, SpaceX has already been gearing up for the coming Starship launches. It test-fired the Flight 5 vehicle early last month, for example.
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Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer
Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer withSpace.comand joined the team in 2010.He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat.His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.
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17 CommentsComment from the forums
Unclear Engineer First, I want to say that this flight was an impressive improvement. And, it is good to see that even with an engine shutdown during liftoff/ascent and another during the landing flip, both vehicles performed nominally. That ability to accommodate some failures and still succeed is the hallmark of reliability.
Next, I want to ask a question about the on-line coverage. I had it here on my computer through Space.com's link, and also on a TV in the kitchen through a Firestick, on what I thought was the same feed. But, on the Firestick link, at T-2:00 and counting, the feed suddenly switched to a video of Elon Musk (or a deep fake?) urging people to click on a QR code displayed on the screen to go to a site where they could send crypto coins and have Musk send back 2 coins of the same type. Sounded to me like a scam to get access to crypto wallets, and it was repeated multiple times, instead of showing the launch and flight feeds. By the time I had dried my hands and checked that the Space.com feed in the other room was still showing the flight feed, I had missed the launch and separation.
So, at this point, I am left wondering whether what I saw on the Firestick/YouTube channel was actually done by Musk, or was it actually a scam taking advantage of the launch audience. Either is outrageous. Both are scary.
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DSyno Admin said:
SpaceX launched its giant Starship rocket for the fourth time ever this morning (June 6) in a dramatic and nail-biting liftoff.SpaceX Starship launches nail-biting Flight 4 test of the world's most powerful rocket (video, photos) : Read more
Obviously a scam. You were on the wrong YouTube channel.
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fj.torres Unclear Engineer said:
First, I want to say that this flight was an impressive improvement. And, it is good to see that even with an engine shutdown during liftoff/ascent and another during the landing flip, both vehicles performed nominally. That ability to accommodate some failures and still succeed is the hallmark of reliability.Next, I want to ask a question about the on-line coverage. I had it here on my computer through Space.com's link, and also on a TV in the kitchen through a Firestick, on what I thought was the same feed. But, on the Firestick link, at T-2:00 and counting, the feed suddenly switched to a video of Elon Musk (or a deep fake?) urging people to click on a QR code displayed on the screen to go to a site where they could send crypto coins and have Musk send back 2 coins of the same type. Sounded to me like a scam to get access to crypto wallets, and it was repeated multiple times, instead of showing the launch and flight feeds. By the time I had dried my hands and checked that the Space.com feed in the other room was still showing the flight feed, I had missed the launch and separation.
So, at this point, I am left wondering whether what I saw on the Firestick/YouTube channel was actually done by Musk, or was it actually a scam taking advantage of the launch audience. Either is outrageous. Both are scary.
Which youtube source did you use on the firestick?
'Cause I had Whataboutit via youtube on my TV and there was no scam, just a non-stop spacex feed plus a commentary window. So no, not a Spacex scam.You just need to pick better feeds. (kidding,okay? Youtube is a free fire zone with lots of chinese scams. Worse than the internet at large, actually, since they censor some serious/honest channels that "offend" china and certain "sensitives" with facts.).The launch itself was great as well as the extensive video documentation proving they did do what they intended to do. (did you see how they did the virtual landing? Simple but briliant.)
My main thought was we could've had this a year or even two years ago if not for the FAA and the politically connected types determined to see boeing launch something, anything,before Starship. Political contributions at work, I suppose.
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Unclear Engineer I did Google "Musk crypto giveaway" and got all sorts of results about the deep fake scam.
It was not just on one You-Tube channel, because I tried at least 3 and they all had that scam.
I really was not paying much attention to it, because I was looking for the real launch feed. But it seemed realistic enough in picture and sound that I think this deep fake technology could destroy our civilization. Just think what evidence could be faked and how that will undermine our legal system. Security camera footage, body camera footage, telephone call recordings, cell phone videos, everything is now questionable.
We will probably get a large dose of exposure to all the possibilities between now and the U.S. election in November. And, I think that will just be the beginning, not the end.
There will probably be deep fakes of extraterrestrials colluding with world leaders and accusations that everything that SpaceX actually accomplishes is only a deep fake. Even a "trusted source" can be faked, so what good is a reputation, now? We could be presented with 2 apparent images of the same person, each telling us that the other one is the fake.
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fj.torres Of note:
Starship has reached the usability level of Falcon 9: recoverable, refurbishable booster + one-way upper stage. That is all that is needed for space stations, space telescopes, Fuel depots, and most notably HLS.
Needs work: heat shields and Raptor 2 reliability. Now to see if Raptor 3 solves the latter.
Kudos to the SpaceX staffers, the real heroes of the story.
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Unclear Engineer I would not say that Starship has reached the same level of development as Falcon. There is still a lot of work to do on recovery and demonstration of reusability. But, they are making good progress. I do hope to see 4 more launches this year.
But, I am also waiting to see if the FAA declares another "mishap", and, if they do, on what basis.
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DrRaviSharma Congratulations SpaceX as I commented on mission yesterday.
Only question on mind is whether orbit achievement criteria are satisfied?
Historic Epic achievement. Kudos to SpaceX vision - leader and team.
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma, Ph.D. USA)
NASA Apollo Achievement Award
ISRO Distinguished Service Awards
Former MTS NASA HQ MSEB Apollo
Former Scientific Secretary ISRO HQ
Ontolog Board of Trustees
Particle and Space Physics
Senior Enterprise ArchitectSAE Fuel Cell Tech Committee voting member for 20 years.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/drravisharma
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Nextuz fj.torres said:
Which youtube source did you use on the firestick?
'Cause I had Whataboutit via youtube on my TV and there was no scam, just a non-stop spacex feed plus a commentary window. So no, not a Spacex scam.You just need to pick better feeds. (kidding,okay? Youtube is a free fire zone with lots of chinese scams. Worse than the internet at large, actually, since they censor some serious/honest channels that "offend" china and certain "sensitives" with facts.).The launch itself was great as well as the extensive video documentation proving they did do what they intended to do. (did you see how they did the virtual landing? Simple but briliant.)
My main thought was we could've had this a year or even two years ago if not for the FAA and the politically connected types determined to see boeing launch something, anything,before Starship. Political contributions at work, I suppose.
I was also on wrong Youtube-channel. Still got the links to it, but it has been taken down by Youtube: 6BUrRiI_6d4View: https://m.youtube.com/live/6BUrRiI_6d4?si=lAyBGh_XOLyUGojD
or
6BUrRiI_6d4View: https://youtube.com/live/6BUrRiI_6d4?si=CCel-MdgSE427h31Alternate between a Nasa channel and this one. Something was strange with it.
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fj.torres Unclear Engineer said:
I would not say that Starship has reached the same level of development as Falcon. There is still a lot of work to do on recovery and demonstration of reusability. But, they are making good progress. I do hope to see 4 more launches this year.But, I am also waiting to see if the FAA declares another "mishap", and, if they do, on what basis.
The FAA can't because one didn't happen. They accepted 4 categories of incidents as allowable and reentry issues was one of the four.
The launch met all goals and nobody was ever at risk.
No excuses.As to Starship, it isn't operational yet, but it is functional.
And as the largest orbital lift system it can start generating revenue this year.
It already works like a disposable today. They can fish it out of the water and refurbish it right now. They won't because it's not a finished design and they have bigger goals. And they can meet them fairly easily.The biggest challenge is the flap hinges. They either need to shield them better or use a different, more heat resistant material. Preferably lighter. And NASA just revealed they developed one: GRX-810.
They'll be " catching" boosters and starships by year's end.
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Unclear Engineer Is the he FAA still is issuing individual launch approvals for each Starship launch?
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