Spaceship Flight 6 Launch: SpaceX Attempts to Land a Rocket Booster on the ‘Mechazilla’ Tower

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Just weeks after SpaceX wowed the public with a precision landing of a giant rocket booster, the company is preparing for another test flight of the most powerful launch vehicle ever built. SpaceX will again attempt the maneuver that sends the booster back into the mechanical arms – or “chopsticks” – of a launch tower.

The nearly 400-foot (121-meter) tall spaceship system is on track to lift off on Nov. 19 from the company’s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas.

The two-stage megarocket – with the Starship spacecraft sitting atop the Super Heavy booster – will attempt to lift off during a 30-minute period beginning at 5pm ET on Tuesday.

SpaceX will stream the event live on the company’s X account and notes on its site that the timing of the event is subject to change.

This unmanned test marks the fastest turnaround time yet in SpaceX’s test campaign for Starship, which will play a key role in NASA’s cornerstone Artemis program. Aiming to put boots on the moon as early as 2026, the space agency plans to use the rocket’s upper stage, the Starship spacecraft, as a lunar lander that will take astronauts to the moon’s surface.

The goal of these test flights is to figure out how SpaceX could one day recover and quickly return Super Heavy boosters and Starship spacecraft for future missions. Rapidly reusing rocket parts is considered essential to dramatically reduce the time and costs required to deliver cargo – or ships carrying people – to space.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches, said it did not have to undertake the lengthy process of reviewing a launch permit change because the flight path of this week’s test flight is expected to closely mimic an earlier test flight .

“The FAA determined that SpaceX met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight,” the agency said in a statement. “The FAA has determined that SpaceX’s requested changes for (Tuesday’s test flight) are within the range of what was previously analyzed.”

Starship’s fifth integrated test flight launched on October 13 and attracted international attention with SpaceX’s ambitious attempt to maneuver the 71-meter-tall Super Heavy back onto a giant landing structure after the booster separated from the Starship spacecraft.

A pair of giant metal tongs, which SpaceX calls “chopsticks,” successfully caught the Super Heavy in the air.

“Starship’s fifth flight test was a pivotal moment toward a complete and rapidly reusable launch system,” the company said in a statement.

A spaceship is considered crucial to SpaceX’s mission to eventually take humans to Mars for the first time.

For NASA’s Artemis program, SpaceX has government contracts worth nearly $4 billion to complete the task of developing a cost-effective space transportation system.

When the countdown clock strikes zero Tuesday afternoon, the Super Heavy booster will fire up its 33 powerful Raptor engines and propel the Starship spacecraft, which rides atop the booster, into space.

After consuming most of its fuel and breaking away from the Starship spacecraft, the Super Heavy booster will change course and steer itself back to the launch site. The booster will aim to perform another precision landing in the arms of the launch and landing structure – nicknamed “Mechazilla” by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk – at the company’s Starbase facility.

If the test flight team believes that conditions are favorable for a landing attempt, the booster touchdown should occur approximately seven minutes after launch.

The Starship spacecraft, meanwhile, will fire up its own six engines before entering a coasting phase as it drifts through space. About half an hour later, the capsule will briefly reignite its engines before bracing for reentry — the process of returning to the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere.

During the fourth integrated Starship test flight in early June, the spacecraft suffered significant damage. The Starship spacecraft shed numerous heat tiles designed to protect the vehicle from intense temperatures caused by the pressure and friction of reentry.

“Because of lost tiles… the front flaps were so melted that it was like trying to control them with little skeleton hands,” Musk said after that mission, adding that the fourth flight was about 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) from the intended landing site . in the Indian Ocean.