Highlights: SpaceX launches Starship test flight 5

SpaceX says the Super Heavy rocket booster’s return back to Earth will offer up a new feature for the fifth test flight: deafening sonic booms.

The company said this “unique aspect” will be caused by the vehicle traveling faster than the speed of sound, sending a ripple of noise through the landscape.

While sonic booms of varying degrees of loudness have rung out on prior test flights, SpaceX expects the ones caused by the booster return may be more intense.

Here’s what the company had to say about it in a blog post:

Shown here is a close-up view of SpaceX's Starship rocket in Boca Chica, Texas, in February 2022.

SpaceX isn’t just trying to recover the Super Heavy booster.

The company also wants to one day land and reuse the upper Starship spacecraft.

For this flight, however, SpaceX will only aim to practice a belly flop landing maneuver over the Indian Ocean rather than attempting to stick a landing on terra firma. But to get to that point, Starship has to survive reentry — a breakneck process that occurs as the vehicle blares back into the thick of the Earth’s atmosphere while still traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour.

The pressure and friction can cause extreme temperatures.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said after the last test flight that the reentry process left Starship badly damaged.

One problem was the loss of heat shield tiles — thousands of small, black hexagons affixed to the spacecraft’s exterior that are meant to shield the vehicle from extreme temperatures during reentry.

But SpaceX has put in some upgrades this time around, according to a recent blog post:

Ron Parker holds pieces of heat shield tiles he found after the first test launch of Space X's Starship in Boca Chica, Texas, in April 2023.

One problem that Starship encountered during its fourth test flight in June, according to CEO Elon Musk, was the loss of heat shield tiles — or thousands of small, black hexagons affixed to the spacecraft’s exterior that are meant to shield the vehicle from extreme temperatures during reentry.

Losing a large number of those tiles deeply hindered the vehicle’s ability to attempt a soft landing, according to Musk. During a livestream of that mission, viewers could actually see chunks of the tiles ripping off the vehicle during its descent, and one of the Starship’s wings appeared warped and worn — barely clinging on to the spacecraft’s body.

“Because of lost tiles…the forward flaps were so melted it was like trying to control it with little skeleton hands,” Musk said during a July interview posted to YouTube.

He added that the issue caused Starship to land roughly 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) away from its intended splashdown site in the ocean.

The livestream for today’s test flight launch attempt just kicked off on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

Hosting the event are SpaceX engineers Kate Tice and Jessie Anderson.

SpaceX is moving forward with loading propellant, the company announced via X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The propellant includes liquid methane and superchilled liquid oxygen — or “LOX” — which serves as the oxidizer. Both are pumped into the rocket from nearby tanks.

The rocket holds millions of pounds of fuel and oxidizer. Super Heavy alone can hold up to 8 million pounds (3,700 metric tons) of propellant, while the Starship spacecraft can hold another 3 million (1,500 metric tons).

SpaceX's Starbase launch facility under construction in Boca Chica, Texas, in October 2021.

Starbase lies next to Boca Chica Beach, the strip of coastline on the Gulf of Mexico that lies at the southernmost tip of Texas.

Only one roadway runs in and out of the area: A narrow stretch of asphalt called Boca Chica Highway. The westbound lane includes a US Border Patrol checkpoint.

Before SpaceX moved in, there were only a couple dozen homes nearby in an area called Boca Chica Village. And locals from the neighboring city of Brownsville routinely trekked to Boca Chica Beach to enjoy the rare slice of untouched coastline.

Most longtime residents have since been pushed out. SpaceX has purchased and painted many of the homes, allowing employees to move in. And launchpads now lie mere steps from the sand.

And the company’s presence has only grown from there: Rows of airstream trailers provide temporary housing for workers. A small restaurant for employees lies just off the road. And there are colossal buildings and work yards with scraps of rocket bodies lying about.

Some locals are angered to see their once remote beach community overrun by SpaceX employees and rocket construction.

And SpaceX has repeatedly drawn the ire of environmentalists who say the company has disregarded local wildlife and dumped wastewater into the surrounding wetlands. (The company has denied the allegations.)

The SpaceX Starship sits on a launch pad at Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on October 12.

In its first big update of the day, SpaceX revealed that it’s aiming for a takeoff time of 7:25 a.m. CT (8:25 a.m. ET) this morning.

That target liftoff time is cutting it close for SpaceX’s 30-minute launch window, which opens at 7 a.m. CT (8 a.m. ET.) A launch window is a specific time frame in which a rocket is permitted to lift off.

So, if SpaceX doesn’t fire up the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft by 7:30 a.m. CT (8:30 a.m. ET), the company may have to push this launch attempt to another day.

SpaceX Starship explodes after launching during a flight test in April 2023.

Starship development has so far centered on a series of increasingly complex test flights, beginning in 2019 with brief hop tests of a vehicle nicknamed “Starhopper” that lifted mere feet off the ground.

After that, the company moved on to testing larger scale versions of the Starship vehicle on brief suborbital test flights. Many of those crashed and burned as SpaceX hashed out how to get the vehicle to land upright.

More recently, the company has focused on more daring launches of fully stacked Starships atop Super Heavy boosters. (The Super Heavy is the bottom part of the Starship system, giving the vehicle the initial thrust at liftoff and enough power to reach orbit.)

The inaugural test launch of a Starship and Super Heavy — called an integrated test flight — took off in April 2023.

That launch aimed solely to get the 400-foot (121-meter) vehicle off the launchpad. And it did just that before exploding mere minutes into flight over the Gulf of Mexico. Each of the three test flights since then have incrementally improved upon the last.

SpaceX is known to embrace fiery mishaps in the early stages of spacecraft development, saying these failures help the company rapidly implement design changes that lead to better results.

SpaceX's Starship launches its fourth flight test from Boca Chica, Texas, on June 6.

You may have heard Starship is the biggest rocket ever created. And it is — by a long shot.

Starship stands at nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall and packs 16.7 million pounds (7,590 tons) of force at liftoff.

Let’s compare that to some of the other largest rockets ever constructed — past and present.

A NASA artist’s illustration of Artemis astronauts working on the Moon.

SpaceX — and NASA — have huge goals for this rocket.

NASA wants to use Starship to carry out the final leg of the journey to put astronauts back on the moon for the first time in five decades as part of its Artemis program. The space agency gave SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract in 2021 to get the job done, and it inked another $1 billion deal after that.

Starship is also the linchpin of SpaceX’s goal of getting humans to Mars. The company’s founding purpose is to make humans a multi-planetary species, sending them to live on other planets in case Earth becomes unsuitable for life.

That task would require a truly massive rocket.

“We are trying to build something that is capable of creating a permanent base on the moon and a city on Mars — that’s why it is so large,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said last year.

Whether that goal is feasible — economically, technologically and politically — remains to be seen. But Musk and SpaceX have garnered a diehard fanbase rallied around the idea.

Other items on the agenda for Starship:

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lands upright for the first time in the Atlantic Ocean on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship in April 2016.

SpaceX has always made a big deal about reusing rocket parts.

Landing boosters after flight is a feat that SpaceX has mastered with its smaller workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9.

In fact, Falcon 9 boosters have made soft touchdowns on seafaring platforms or ground pads after more than 330 launches — allowing those vehicles to be refurbished and flown again. SpaceX says that has driven down its costs, allowing the company to underprice the rest of the rocket market.

The Falcon 9 boosters land by relighting their engines after detaching from the second stage, or upper portion, of the rocket (which continues into space, carrying satellites or astronauts). The booster then steers itself back toward a platform at sea or on land.

Just before touchdown, the Falcon 9 fires up its engines again — essentially using that power as a braking system.

Starship, meanwhile, is a far more powerful and complex system than the Falcon 9.

With 33 engines at its base, each more powerful than one of the nine used on the Falcon, the Super Heavy booster packs roughly 10 times the amount of thrust at liftoff.

Rather than setting Super Heavy down on legs, it will be guided back to a massive tower with two “chopstick” arms that will attempt to catch the booster as it comes in for landing.

Elon Musk speaks in Paris in 2023.

Musk acknowledged during a July interview posted to YouTube that SpaceX’s goal for this flight “sounds kind of insane,” though its “got a decent chance of working.”

“We’re not breaking physics,” he said, “so success is one of the possible outcomes here.”

Previously, the CEO said he imagined there was about an 80% to 90% chance that SpaceX would figure out a way to catch the booster back at the launch tower at some point in 2024.

Today’s flight will mark the third uncrewed test flight of Starship so far this year — but the first time ever that SpaceX has attempted to steer the Super Heavy booster back to a dry landing.

SpaceX's Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket in Boca Chica, Texas, in November 2023.

Today — for the first time ever — the company will attempt to put a unique concept to the test.

If all goes according to plan, once it separates from the Starship spacecraft, the Super Heavy booster will steer itself into the arms of Mechazilla, a massive structure back at SpaceX’s launch site that the company hopes will catch rockets mid-air as they head in for landing.

The tower was dubbed “Mechazilla” by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk for its likeness to a metallic Godzilla.

The structure’s arms, or “chopsticks,” can be used to stack and move boosters and spacecraft at the launch site before takeoff as well as snag a rocket as it maneuvers to land, according to SpaceX.

Musk has said SpaceX will evaluate how Mechazilla holds up during launch before giving the Super Heavy the green light to attempt to return to the ground pad.

SpaceX also has the option to wave off the landing attempt and send Super Heavy to a splashdown in the ocean.

Either way, the Super Heavy’s landing will occur about seven minutes after liftoff.

Elon Musk, left, and FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker.

For years, there’s appeared to be no love lost between SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches.

Musk has repeatedly used X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that he purchased two years ago for $44 billion, to blast the FAA.

In a September 17 post, he threatened to sue the agency for “regulatory overreach.”

Musk — who has taken an increasingly vocal stance on politics, voicing distaste for the Biden administration and his support for former President Donald Trump — also posted on September 25 that he believes FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker “should resign.”

Musk has also alleged the agency’s activities have been “politically motivated” to punish SpaceX.

Musk’s claims came after the FAA proposed $633,009 in civil penalties against SpaceX over violating launch license requirements twice during flights of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

SpaceX has denied wrongdoing related to those requirements, saying none of the allegations related to public safety. In a September 18 letter, the company said that it also gave FAA advanced notice of changes to its launch operations and the agency failed to act in a timely manner.

Still, the FAA has granted SpaceX its long-awaited license to move forward with Starship’s fifth uncrewed test launch. The agency announced Saturday that SpaceX had “met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight.”

Onlookers watch as SpaceX's Starship rocket is prepared for a test launch in Boca Chica, Texas, on Saturday.

It’s that time again: SpaceX is kicking off yet another daring test flight of its Starship rocket. There’s no crew on board. And like all practice runs for this developmental rocket, success is not guaranteed.

But SpaceX is hoping to keep improving, building on four prior test flights that have showed significant progress: The very first attempt in April 2023 cleared the launchpad before exploding moments later. But the last test, in June, saw both Starship and its Super Heavy rocket booster survive the full flight and practice landing maneuvers.

Here’s what to expect today: