### Starship Flight Test: Launch, Staging, and Splashdown Success

Starship's successful flight test showcased critical capabilities, including an in-space engine relight and controlled re-entry.

### Successful Starship Flight Test: Milestones Achieved and Challenges Faced
* 🚀 "All right, we're now T-minus **20 seconds until liftoff** of Starship flight 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1."
* 🎉 The launch proceeded with nominal telemetry, confirming **all systems were functioning well** as the vehicle ascended and passed through **Max Q**.
* 🔥 Hot staging was successfully executed, with **all six ship engines igniting** while still attached to the booster, followed by the booster performing a **boost back burn**.
* 🌊 Unfortunately, the booster was unable to complete the catch attempt, resulting in a **planned water landing** in the **Gulf Coast of Texas**.
* 🌍 The Starship continued its flight, achieving **nominal orbital insertion** and demonstrating its capabilities, including an **in-space relight of a Raptor engine**.
* 💥 "This is the first time ever lighting a Raptor while in outer space other than our ascent burn," showcasing a **critical capability for future missions**.
* 🌌 As the Starship re-entered the atmosphere, it faced **extreme conditions**, creating a **plasma field** around the vehicle while maintaining **nominal performance**.
* 🌊 Ultimately, Starship successfully splashed down in the Indian Ocean, marking a **significant milestone** in its testing journey and paving the way for **future orbital missions**.

All right, we're now T-minus 20 seconds until liftoff of Starship flight 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. [Applause] Vehicle is pitching down range, booster Raptor chamber pressure nominal, booster and ship avionics power

and telemetry nominal. Just a little over a minute press, we're about 6 miles away, so all the sound is still hitting us here. Hearing good call outs that power, telemetry nominal, that's flying straight and true. We do see all 33 Raptor engines lit up on telemetry

screens. This point, we've passed through that point of maximum aerodynamic pressure, that Max Q. Now coming up in just a little over a minute from now is going to be hot staging. So we're going to see the six engines on the ship ignite while still

attached to the booster. Just before that, we'll see all but three center engines on the booster shut down in what we call MECO, most engines cut off, instead of main engine cutoff. Just about 30 seconds away from hot [Music] staging and we heard we heard the tower

is go for catch cutoff. The return flag is set for True. Ship engine startup, stage separation. All right, hot staging confirmed, six out of six lit on the ship, booster boost back going. We heard that, we are go for catch Kate Jesse, take good the views.

Hopefully, I got a booster coming home real soon. Wow, from view here, Dan, uh, great views of planet Earth behind that super heavy booster right now. It is performing the boost back burn. Good news there, telling us that the uh the pressures inside the ship are good, that

is the second stage or the upper portion of the vehicle follow along with the Telemetry on the bottom of your screen yeah booster is currently super heavy is currently in its boost back burn this boost back burn is powered by Telemetry nominal this boost back burn lasts just a little bit over a minute so

we've got a little approximately 30 seconds left we've had shut down of that boost back burn up next will be hot stage jettison the view from the camera on the left from the booster on the left hand side of your screen and then tracking

cam there on the right hand side of your screen we'll see those grid fins booster offshore divert and we can also see that the uh hot stage has been jettisoned yes visual confirmation of that there on your screen which is great now the next

Starship is following a nominal trajectory the next step for booster is going into that landing burn again it'll light up 13 of those engines and then uh paired down to three engines right before booster catch all right now just real quick we did hear the call out uh

boost back or excuse me booster offshore divert unfortunately that means that we are no go for the catch um as we said before both the Tower and the vehicle as well as the operators on Console have been actively evaluating the commit criteria for that return to the launch

Tower um and unfortunately we did not have a pass on those commit criteria so we are no go for Tower catch and we did mention that we're constantly evaluating the criteria for catch there's a lot of things that need to go well in order to line that up Unfortunately today we will

for a booster catch today but what you're seeing on your screen is ship uh currently making its way towards the Indian Ocean still looking good so far exactly so views there of the booster on the left hand side of your screen views of the ship on the right hand side of

your screen now we've said before that it was not guaranteed that we would be able to make a uh a tower catch today so while we were hoping for it like we said it was pretty epic on attempt one but uh the safety of the teams and the public

and uh and and the pad itself are uh paramount so we are accepting no compromises in any of those areas exactly and we're still going to get a lot of good flight data with booster even but especially with ship again we have an additional objective today to do

an in-space relight of a Raptor engine which again will help us set us up for uh being able to do deorbit burns which is Chip chamber pressure is phenomenal which which is important for orbital flights and what you're seeing on your screen is a view from super heavy as

it's making its way back down to earth yeah once again we are attempting an offshore landing of the super heavy booster uh so we have seen this before uh and it is still very fun to watch watching it come down uh for a soft

splashdown uh off the Gulf Coast of Texas we can see it there re-entering uh we saw earlier those grid fins there are four hypersonic grid fins oh we can see that the landing burn has begun on the super heavy booster same pattern 13 engines will

Light gone down to three just as we expected, and what an incredible view of splashdown that we got today of Super Heavy. Yeah, I'm sure the buoy cam views will be pretty awesome once again. So we'd like to confirm a water landing once again for the Super

Heavy booster. Congrats to the SpaceX team uh for making that milestone as well. Now ship continues to look good. We can see uh that it is. While all of that was happening, the crowd here in Hawthorn uh continuing to react to all

these amazing views that we're getting. The next milestone is Starship is in terminal guidance. Great news there. Uh uh Starship terminal guidance referring to what we see here on our screen, the upper stage uh at uh about 8 minutes 35 seconds or so we have ship engine cutoff

off, which will be the cut off of the uh the the Raptor engines. We can see on our screen ship giving us some incredible views brought to us by Starlink. Uh this view is also very interesting because we can see basically the receding tile line that we referred

to earlier where we mentioned we have removed a number of heat shield tiles in order to test out and push the envelope on the ship and demonstrate what its capabilities are. Ship engine cut off, and there we just heard call out for SEO ship engine cut off. Great news there.

Everything continuing to look awesome for ship. Full view looking a on ship here. Ship FTS is saved. Nominal orbit insertion. There's that call out we were waiting for. Confirmation of good orbital insertion for ship today. It has been a very exciting afternoon so far. Uh we'd like to send it

back over to Dan who can give us that uh live view experience Dan uh once again are you okay after witnessing another Starship launch yeah uh totally fine uh it's you guys have to be jealous this is the only way to do this this is fantastic I know it was really cool to

see a liftoff 33 out of 33 uh didn't go for the booster catch today initially we were good and then we tripped to uh commit criteria and did the offshore divert so we went and did that water landing as everybody saw uh we'll dig

into it a little bit more uh but again this is we've done it once we've now done it twice we're going to keep trying to do it is this is just a core capability of Starship and what's going to make it so incredible uh there's a

lot left we're just about almost 10 minutes into this flight uh so about 50 plus minutes still to go ship nominal orbit so it's on its way around the planet it's going to attempt to do an in-space burn we're going to light one

of those Raptor engines the sea level ones in the middle uh just to help demonstrate that we can relight in that microgravity environment really critical for deorbit burns as we start to do some orbital missions uh in the not too distant future um and then following

that we'll see a ship entry maybe a splash down as you guys said we're we're really going to be pushing ship on this one uh we're pretty much intentionally putting it in places where we expect it might not do so great and all that's to

try and help us learn, see if we were a little too conservative, and then maybe that opens up more capability for when we start catching them. But uh, I'll check back in with everybody in a little bit. Uh, I'm going to tune in and watch the

ship fly around planet Earth uh and hopefully we see it re-entering in the not too distant future. Heard the call out for startup. There's some light, there's that Raptor relit and shut down. All right, there you have it, the first time ever lighting a Raptor while in

outer space other than our ascent burn. Um, so really cool to see that relit. That's that's a pretty critical capability that we're going to need uh when we're doing orbital missions in the not too distant future. The ship, as you can see, is

beginning to reenter the Earth's atmosphere. As a reminder, one of the main goals of today's flight test is for the ship to make it through the extreme heat of re-entry and to do so in a controlled manner. Now, re-entry is typically a

portion of flight where we don't have communication capability with the spacecraft because it's re-entering at or around orbital velocity, which is roughly 8 km/s or about five miles per second. Now, at those speeds, yep, pretty fast, uh the spacecraft is moving through

the atmosphere H rather quickly, and that results in friction as we can see that starting to happen on our screen, and this creates a plasma field around the vehicle. We're getting a lot clearer view of the Earth in the background with uh the different temperatures that we're

seeing with the different colors, um, of that plasma around the ship, which is really really cool to see again. Um, we are pushing the limits of Starship today, um, but so far everything is looking pretty nominal. Um, we'll see how the next few minutes goes. Yeah, like we've said before, 

don't be surprised if this is not entirely smooth sailing all the way down to the ocean surface. Similar to Flight 5, we are targeting the same splashdown location in the Indian Ocean, but we are not expecting to recover the vehicle. And there's that NOS down. 

[Applause] Orientation now, the uh Raptor engines will relight and help flip the booster back up. This is a more severe flip given the orientation. Uh, the engines will shut down prior to the water making impact, prior to the vehicle making impact with 

the water. Starship is doing great so far. There's those engines relighting. What a great reorientation by Starship. Wow, wow. All three down to two, into the water. St wow, and we have Starship splashed down in the Indian Ocean. Some awesome buoy cam action here. 

Daylight, incredible. We really pushed Starship and and made it all the way back down to Earth. 

SpaceX Starship Flight Test 6: See Everything That Happened in 14 Minutes

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Liftoff of Starship flight with 33 Raptor engines ignited.

Confirmation of nominal power, telemetry, and flight path.

MECO (most engines cut off) on booster, preparing for hot staging.

Hot staging confirmed, ship engines ignited, booster boost back initiated.

Booster performing boost back burn, pressures inside the ship are good.

Boost back burn lasting approximately one minute.

Hot stage jettisoned, booster offshore divert.

Starship on nominal trajectory, booster initiating landing burn.

No go for booster tower catch due to not meeting commit criteria.

Starship Continues Flight, No Booster Catch

Booster performing offshore water landing.

Safety of teams and public is paramount; booster catch not guaranteed.

Valuable flight data will still be obtained.

In-space Raptor engine relight attempted for deorbit burn testing.

Super Heavy booster attempting offshore landing.

Super Heavy booster landing burn sequence.

Successful water landing confirmed for Super Heavy booster.

Starship Orbital Insertion and Engine Cutoff

Views of receding tile line, testing heat shield capabilities.

Analysis of booster catch failure and future attempts.

Starship's core capabilities and future potential.

Upcoming in-space engine relight for deorbit burn demonstration.

Planned ship entry and potential splashdown.

Successful in-space Raptor engine relight.

Starship beginning re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

Re-entry communication challenges due to high velocity.

Plasma field formation around the vehicle during re-entry.

Pushing the limits of Starship's capabilities.

Targeted splashdown location in the Indian Ocean.

Raptor engines relight for reorientation.

Starship successfully splashes down in the Indian Ocean.

Successful completion of the mission, pushing Starship's limits.