New Delhi, Nov 7 || After a historic test flight of Starship last month, SpaceX on Thursday announced the sixth, aiming to launch on November 18.
During Starship’s fifth test flight in October, the Super Heavy booster successfully returned to the launch site and was caught by the “chopstick arms” and catch tower at Starbase.
For the next flight, the world's largest and most powerful rocket “aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online”, SpaceX said in a statement.
While it once again aims to return to the launch site for the catch, other objectives include “reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space”. It also plans to test “a suite of heatshield experiments and manoeuvring changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean”.
As the objectives were similar, the US Federal Aviation Administration approved both flights 5 and 6 at the same time in October.
The company is also expected to introduce several upgrades to the system, including more redundancy in the booster propulsion system, updated software controls, and other changes.