SpaceX shares photos of Starship ahead of sixth flight on Tuesday

By Trevor Mogg Published November 17, 2024

SpaceX's Starship ahead of its sixth test flight. — The Starship on the launchpad at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas ahead of its sixth test flight. This is one of four images shared by SpaceX on Sunday. SpaceX

SpaceX is just a couple of days away from sending its enormous Starship rocket on its sixth test flight from its facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

The mission had originally targeted Monday, November 18, for the launch of the vehicle — comprising the main-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft — but on Friday, SpaceX pushed the launch to Tuesday, November 19. Here’s how to watch a livestream of the mission.

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The Elon Musk-led spaceflight company has just released a set of images showing the 120-meter-tall Starship stacked and pretty much ready to fly.

“Propellant load test and preflight checkouts complete ahead of Starship’s sixth flight test,” SpaceX said in a post on X.

Propellant load test and preflight checkouts complete ahead of Starship's sixth flight test → https://t.co/oIFc3u9laE pic.twitter.com/r6XNKyY2Zf

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 17, 2024

The Starship took its first test flight in April 2023, but it only lasted a matter of minutes before an anomaly prompted the mission team to blow up the rocket in midair over the Gulf of Mexico.

But each subsequent flight showed improvements in every aspect of the rocket’s performance. On the fifth flight last month, SpaceX performed a successful and truly spectacular “catch” of the 70-meter-tall Super Heavy at its first attempt, a challenging maneuver that took place as the booster returned to Earth following its deployment of the Starship spacecraft to orbit.

Packing a colossal 17 million pounds of thrust at launch, the Starship is the most powerful rocket ever to get off the ground. Once fully tested, NASA and SpaceX want to use the vehicle to transport crew and cargo to the moon, Mars, and possibly beyond. It could even be configured to fly approximately 100 people in a single flight, though a mission of that magnitude is a long way off.

One of the Starship’s first big tests will be to use a modified version of the upper-stage spacecraft to land two NASA astronauts on the lunar surface in the Artemis III mission, which is currently scheduled for 2026.

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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