SpaceX's Starship almost broke apart upon re-entry for its fourth flight test

SpaceX’s Starship lifted off on its fourth test flight today, June 6, at 7:50 am CT/8:50 am ET. Was it successful? Let’s break down what happened and then I’ll tell you my thoughts.

Launch was delayed by about 50 minutes, but the countdown proceeded normally and right at 7:50 am CT, the rocket lifted off. Everything went smoothly during launch, one of the Raptor engines went about 3 seconds after launch, but that didn’t seem to affect launch.

Stage separation went well, and we saw the Super Heavy booster jettison the hot staging ring.

This was to reduce mass during re-entry in order to help achieve controlled re-entry of the Super Heavy booster. Super Heavy conducted its boostback burn and began its descent to the Earth’s surface. It looks like all the engines but one did fire for the landing burn and Super Heavy successfully made a controlled landing into the Gulf of Mexico at about 10 km/hr.

Starship continued its coast phase during its suborbital flight. We lost the video feed for awhile there but everything looked good. Towards the end of the coast phase, we started seeing plasma from the heat of the Earth’s atmosphere building around the ship. I said this during the third flight test, but these views are just unreal.

The re-entry phase started, and we began really seeing the stress of re-entry heat and pressure on the vehicle.

As the ship went through max heating and max q (the maximum aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle) we saw the ship start to come apart. SpaceX had been concerned about heating on the flaps, and we saw it begin to break off the vehicle — but it was very impressive that it stayed attached and actually continued to work throughout the flight.

At one point the camera cracked and stuff built up on the camera, so our views became interrupted, but the video feed continued to transmit and we were able to see a little here and there. It’s amazing the cameras lasted pretty much the whole way down.

This is an animation from SpaceX (link is to the time index on my YouTube video) on what the landing burn is supposed to look like. The ship comes down on its belly through the atmosphere, like the Space Shuttle did, and then at the last minute, fires a landing burn to turn upright.

Well, the ship was approaching the ocean, and, honestly I was shocked the landing burn actually fired. It’s not clear if all of the engines fired, but it looks like they all did (they wouldn’t have been able to do what I talk about next without at least two of the three engines firing). According to telemetry and the data we got from the vehicle, it looks like Starship (or whatever was left of it) did the flip maneuver, turned upright, and actually did successfully make a soft vertical splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Yes, this was a (surprising!) success

I said earlier this week that SpaceX really needed to figure out the controlled landing of Super Heavy and the re-entry of Starship for me to consider this flight a success. (I also talked in that video about why I judge these test flights of Starship differently than operational flights, so check that out.) I was FULLY prepared to get on video today and talk about how this was a failure because SpaceX has contractual commitments and obligations with NASA and private organizations to use Starship in the near future, and they weren’t making enough progress.

But they did it. They didn’t execute every part of it perfectly — it’s unclear what shape Starship was in when it hit the water, they once again lost a LOT of heating tiles, something SpaceX really needs to figure out, the ship was disintegrating on the way down — but this was successful. I’m actually very impressed here.

I feel like half the population wants me to get up here and rip apart SpaceX and the other half wants me to fangirl them on. I’m not going to do either — I’m going to judge them based on my extensive knowledge and experience as a journalist covering the space industry, the same way I’d evaluate any other company or organization attempting to do this, regardless of my (negative) feelings about its CEO.

Here’s what’s next for Starship

So, what’s next? Well, the fact that SpaceX did accomplish a successful controlled splashdown of Super Heavy and a mostly successful re-entry and controlled splashdown of Starship, it’s possible that they’ll be able to turn around for the next test flight more quickly — and it’s unclear whether the FAA will even need to open a mishap investigation here. Even if they do, it’s likely going to be a quicker licensing process for the next flight.

For the next test flight, they may try to recover one or both of the stages (they may even try to land Super Heavy back at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas). It’s also important to note that this was a suborbital flight. While the Ship survived re-entry heating from suborbital, orbital velocity is a different story. And they still need to figure out the heat tiles issue, though I’m guessing they’ve gotten some really good data from this flight — they intentionally removed some heat tiles from non-critical areas of Starship to more closely examine re-entry heating.

This is good news for the space industry. Even if you don’t like SpaceX, which I understand, they’re crucial to the industry, NASA’s goals to land humans on the moon, all kinds of things when it comes to low Earth orbit and exploring space. I was really glad to see them succeed today and I am looking forward to seeing what they do with the next flight.