SpaceX Launches Second Starship Flight Test
SpaceX is targeting Saturday for the second flight of Starship. The company has received regulatory approval for the flight. The flight will feature the newly added hot staging ring, allowing the Ship to separate from the Booster while the Booster engines are still firing. The stack features multiple upgrades compared to the first flight, including 63 upgrades SpaceX submitted to the FAA to mitigate issues from the first flight. Ahead of the launch, SpaceX will close the road, evacuate the village and surrounding area, and clear the potential blast radius.
Booster 9 will attempt a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, while Ship 25 will attempt to fly around the earth before performing a reentry and hard splashdown in the Hawaiian area.
Window Opens: November 18th at 7AM CST (13:00 UTC)
Window Closes: November 18th at 7:20AM CST (13:20 UTC)
Mission: Starship’s second fully integrated test flight
Vehicles: Booster 9 and Ship 25
Recovery: No recovery. Booster will attempt soft splashdown, Ship will not and instead will impact the ocean
Stats:
· SpaceX’s 85th launch of the year and the 6th launch of the month
· SpaceX’s 2nd space launch from Starbase
· Starship will, once again, become the largest, most massive, and most powerful rocket every created breaking its own record.
Forum link: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=57219.0
SpaceX’s launch page: https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-2
NSF Starship merch: https://shop.nasaspaceflight.com/collections/starship-orbital-flight-test
NSF Launch Article: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2023/11/ift-2-launch/
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Launch Highlights Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3F8aTBLLx0
Thanks to all who were watching the livestream. Peaked at 260,000 viewing at the same time!
Lift Off – 8:56:02
Stage Sep – 8:58:49
Booster RUD – 8:59:24
Ship RUD – 9:04:18
thank you
thank you
Not the hero we deserve but certainly the hero we need.
There was a big puff of gas on the left-hand side of Starship at T + 07 06, and one to the right at T + 07 39. Those may have been some kind of failure leading to the destruction, although the telemetry still showed all six engines were firing afterwards.
@CeeJay01Still flying ship 25 did not RUD
Thank you, NASASpaceflight for making amazing content for us, and the whole spaceflight community!
That booster explosion looked magnificent, it looked like a super nova nebula. Thank you SpaceX and NSF, well done.
The booster explosion had a yield of 1 kiloton
Just like those used on Thor missiles that were test detonated in space
Booster phase of flight was flawless. I’m highly confident that IFT-3 will reach reentry.
Me too 😁
We’ll probably see IFT-3 by February if we’re lucky
The scale is just hard to comprehend. It’s essentially a small skyscraper launched into space. Just unbelievable!!
Hopefully, the next launch will take place within the next 3 months. January will be amazing!
Hopefully the FAA isn’t a huge pain in the ass again 😂
Not likely now, as they have to go through another incident investigation with the FAA.
The important thing is that the olm is still standing strong and looking like it’s ready for another test flight
Every RUD leads to a mishap investigation. But it may be faster than the previous one, if the OLM is indeed largely undamaged.
@hawkdsl I’m assuming that each time it happens it’ll be faster.
Booster 9 sacrifice for Ship 25 to get into orbit will not be forgotten. Congrats for the epic launch SpaceX 🎉
Watched it live last night just wanted to comment on this video my HUGE thanks to NSF and anyone else involved. The amount of passion, love and effort you guys put it is very uplifting. To Mars!
Excellent coverage guys, another one for the history books