As SpaceX gears up for the sixth test flight of its mighty Starship, the company has shared images of the rocket out on the launchpad at the Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The images capture the striking view of the almost 400-foot-tall rocket, with the 165-foot-tall upper stage mounted on top of the Super Heavy booster.
The test flight is scheduled for Monday, November 18, with the aim being to test new facilities such as burning one of the Raptor engines on the upper stage while in space to test future abilities to perform a deorbit burn. The company will also be hoping to once again catch the incoming booster for reuse using the giant “chopsticks” at its pad, as it previously did for the first time during the fifth test flight of the Starship in October.
“The next Starship flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online,” SpaceX wrote in an update. “Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean.”
Notable in the images is the fun decal of a banana attached to the side of the Starship, showing a pixelated banana holding a real banana. It seems to be a shout out to the engineers’ joke of using a banana for scale, because why not.
In addition to preparing for this next test flight of Starship, SpaceX has also been busy today with a Starlink launch, which marks the company’s 17th launch in just 31 days. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink satellites launched at 8:21 a.m. ET (5:21 a.m. PT) on November 14 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, and deployed its satellites shortly after. This follows another launch yesterday — this was a Starlink mission too, with 20 Starlink satellites launched at 9:23 p.m. PT on November 13 (12:23 a.m. ET on November 14) from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
SpaceX shared images of today’s launch as well, with a Falcon 9 launching into clear blue skies over Florida:
Falcon 9 lifts off from pad 40 in Florida, completing our 17th launch in 31 days! pic.twitter.com/w0snRDcUA9
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 14, 2024
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.