With a second-term president looking on, SpaceX’s sixth Starship test flight met the company’s metrics for success. Instead of returning to the launch pad, the booster diverted to an ocean ditching but the stripped down first stage survived an aggressive re-entry that was calculated to potentially destroy it. Donald Trump was on hand with Elon Musk for the launch at Boca Chica, Texas, which accomplished its mission of dropping a trove of data, including live video of the re-entry.
After the stunning success of the fifth test, with the successful capture of the booster on the launch tower and soft landing of Starship in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX officials were managing expectations from Tuesday’s launch. The company stripped 1200 heat resistant tiles from Starship to “push it to its limits” during the re-entry and reveal vulnerable areas of the exterior. It all survived but one maneuvering flap did have some burn through. As for the booster, an anomaly of some sort triggered the abort system to send the rocket offshore instead of back to the launch tower. The company said that while the booster was lost, the ditching proved the abort system worked as planned.
