SpaceX completes Starship's 6th test flight

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- SpaceX launched the sixth test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Tuesday but aborted an attempt to catch the booster during the test.

Starship took off from the company's Starbase facility near Brownsville in the U.S. state of Texas. Its Raptor engines ignited during hot-staging separation. After separation from the Starship upper stage, the Super Heavy booster started its planned return to the launch site.

However, mission controllers announced a "booster offshore divert," suggesting that the booster would not return to the launch pad.

SpaceX explained the reason in a release, saying the booster successfully transitioned to its boostback burn to begin the return to the launch site. During this phase, automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt.

The booster then executed a pre-planned divert maneuver, performing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The ship successfully reignited a single Raptor engine while in space, demonstrating the capabilities required to conduct a ship deorbit burn before starting fully orbital missions, according to SpaceX.

With live views and telemetry being relayed by Starlink, the ship successfully made it through reentry and executed a flip, landing burn, and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

"Data gathered from the multiple thermal protection experiments, as well as the successful flight through subsonic speeds at a more aggressive angle of attack, provides invaluable feedback on flight hardware performing in a flight environment as we aim for eventual ship return and catch," said SpaceX.

SpaceX's Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket, collectively referred to as Starship, represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the moon, Mars and beyond.

SpaceX completed its fifth test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Oct. 13, achieving the return of its booster back on the launch pad for the first time.

Through various test flights, SpaceX aims to recover and rapidly refly Super Heavy boosters and Starship spacecraft for future missions. Quickly reusing rocket parts is considered essential to drastically reducing the time and cost of putting cargo or manned ships to space.

Starship plays a key role in NASA. It is the vehicle that NASA selected to carry astronauts on the final leg of their trip to the moon during a mission called Artemis III, currently planned for 2026.