In one of his latest X posts, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared rare video of a Starship upper stage making a vertical water landing.
This interesting video is from Starship’s 6th launch and landing test mission conducted on Tuesday, 19th November 2024. The presence of the then President-elect Donald Trump at Starbase, Texas made the Flight 6 test (IFT-6) much more interesting.
According to Elon Musk, SpaceX is going to retry the Starship water landing in the Flight 8 test scheduled for tomorrow. SpaceX has already acquired the FAA license approval for the Flight 8 Starship launch.
“We need to perfect ship reentry at extreme temperatures before attempting to catch the ship with the tower arms, like the booster,” Musk wrote in his X social media post.
SpaceX has been working on a thermal protection system (TPS) for Starship for a long time. The astronautics and spaceship company has custom-designed TPS heat shield tiles. These tiles are aimed at bearing ultra-high temperatures when Starship re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.
A perfect ship reentry assures that the Starship is going to reach the launch tower in in an intact condition. In the Flight 7 test, SpaceX even removed some heat tiles from the ship’s fake catch pins to test the metal’s integrity after going through extreme temperatures due to atmospheric friction and supersonic velocity. However, Flight 7 Ship 33 ended in a RUD and was lost.
In tomorrow’s Flight 8 test (IFT-8), SpaceX is going to attempt a catch of the Super Heavy booster (Booster 15) and the upper stage Starship spacecraft will attempt a vertical splashdown landing in the Indian Ocean (if all goes well).
If SpaceX makes a perfect water landing of the Starship in tomorrow’s IFT-8 (integrated flight test #8), the chances of catching the upper stage Starship in Flight 9 will significantly increase.
Stay tuned as we bring you more Starship news, videos, and live updates as events take place.
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- SpaceX mounts Flight 9 Starship onto the OLM, shares the landing plan, and stunning views ahead of launch
