SpaceX’s Starship program is preparing for another major test flight next week, pending regulatory approval. This flight will focus on return and landing, while collecting comprehensive flight data to improve future missions.
A new prototype starship is set to burst through the Texas skies, possibly launching on the morning of Wednesday, June 5th. This fourth fully integrated test flight, named IFT-4, is expected to achieve new milestones if all goes according to plan and progress the experimental rocket towards full operational capability.
All signs point to the start. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has completed its safety investigation into the third flight no critical issues in terms of public safety; this likely opens the door to another FAA license to launch a starship. Plus SpaceX completed successfully its second wetsuit test on 23 May with two prototype stages stacked, designated Booster 11 and Ship 29.
Related article: Everything we noticed during the starship’s remarkable third test flight
The third integrated starship flight test, conducted on March 14, included successful stage separation, second-stage engines burning for the duration, an internal propellant transfer demonstration for NASA, and a Starlink dispenser door test. The mission lasted an hour and 49 minutes, with the upper stage unexpectedly disintegrating during reentry.
As for the Super Heavy booster, it successfully ignited 13 engines during its boostback burn, but six shut down prematurely, as SpaceX explained in its Flight 3 message. SpaceX had to destroy the booster during its failed landing attempt, with the Super Heavy exploding 1,515 feet (462 meters) above the Gulf of Mexico. Despite these problems, the mission showed significant progress compared to the first two integrated flight tests, both of which ended in premature explosions.
SpaceX pushed the nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) Starship to new extremes during the third test, and plans to do the same for the fourth. IN declarationSpaceX explained that the fourth flight test shifts the focus from achieving orbit to demonstrating the ability to return both stages. Key objectives will include performing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico with the Super Heavy booster, as well as achieving a controlled starship entry.
To that end, “several software and hardware upgrades were made to increase overall reliability and take into account the experience gained from Flight 3,” the company explained. The SpaceX team will also make some changes, such as dropping the Super Heavy hot stage adapter after the boostback burn to make the booster lighter for the final part of the flight. By “hot stage adapter,” SpaceX refers to the part of the booster where the engines stay fired while the second stage separates and starts burning. The IFT-4 mission will follow a similar path to the previous test, with the upper stage focused on splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
For the fourth test, key aspects to monitor include the performance of the attitude control system, which is critical to the orientation of the vehicle in space; during the third test, a filter blockage in this system caused a loss of control. “The lack of attitude control resulted in an off-nominal entry, with the ship seeing much more heating than expected in both shielded and unprotected areas,” SpaceX said in its report. To solve this, the company added more control redundancy and upgraded the hardware to resist jamming. It will be important to see how well the top stage performs during its short stay in space, and how its hexagonal heat-absorbing tiles fare on return.
“Starship’s fourth flight will aim to bring us closer to the rapidly reusable future on the horizon,” SpaceX said. “We continue to rapidly develop Starship and put the flight hardware into the flight environment to learn as quickly as possible as we build a fully reusable transportation system designed to transport crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.”
Hopefully, the upcoming flight will once again give us stunning views of Earth and the glowing starship. As always, it will be interesting to see where SpaceX succeeds and where it encounters challenges. One thing is certain: it won’t be boring.
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