SpaceX's latest Starship test flight, known as Flight 5, marked another milestone as it showcased a complex sequence of launching, catching, and returning rockets, representing a significant achievement in reusable rocket technology. The flight, which took off from Texas, involved intricate maneuvers including hot stage separation, the boostback burn, and a daring catch by Mechazilla, a tower equipped with chopstick arms designed to catch the returning booster. This meticulous process of deceleration, redirection, and precision landing highlighted SpaceX's advancements in aerodynamic control and safe landing techniques, even as the mission executed smoothly compared to its predecessors.

Despite facing challenges such as a fiery engine bay and rapid methane gas expulsion post-landing, the Super Heavy booster demonstrated successful retrieval. However, the attempt to recover the Starship was less favorable, with a spectacular reentry process followed by issues during landing, resulting in a fiery destruction. SpaceX is likely to improve on these aspects with future iterations, notably the Starship V2, which is expected to address current issues and move closer to attaining full orbital capability.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. aftermath [ˈæftərˌmæθ] - (n.) - The consequences or results following an event, especially an unfortunate one. - Synonyms: (consequences, outcome, aftereffects)

So we're talking about everything that happened on Starship's latest test flight, the aftermath of a historic rocket landing, and what this all means for Starship going forward.

2. launch window [lɔːntʃ ˈwɪndoʊ] - (n.) - A specific time period during which a particular rocket launch needs to occur, typically because of technical, orbital, or safety reasons. - Synonyms: (time frame, period, slot)

Unlike prior starship launches, Flight 5 didn't go right at the top of the launch window, which is 7am local time.

3. velocity [vəˈlɑːsɪti] - (n.) - The speed of something in a given direction. - Synonyms: (speed, rapidity, swiftness)

From a velocity velocity of over 5,000 km per hour.

4. dynamic pressure [daɪˈnæmɪk ˈprɛʃər] - (n.) - The pressure exerted by fluid motion, often experienced during high-speed entries into the atmosphere. - Synonyms: (aerodynamic force, drag pressure, airflow pressure)

This third phase is high dynamic pressure.

5. ablative [əˈbleɪtɪv] - (adj.) - Related to a process in which materials are removed or worn away, generally used in reference to thermal protection. - Synonyms: (erosive, wearing away, ejective)

There is an underlying layer of protection that uses an ablative material.

6. orbit [ˈɔːrbɪt] - (n.) - The curved path of a celestial object or spacecraft around a star, planet, or moon, especially a periodic elliptical revolution. - Synonyms: (path, trajectory, circuit)

The momentum will carry it to a maximum height of 212 km above the surface. But the velocity of just over 26,6000 km per hour is not quite enough to keep it in space for one full orbit around the Earth.

7. reentry [riːˈɛntri] - (n.) - The return of a spacecraft or missile into the Earth's atmosphere from space. - Synonyms: (return, descent, comeback)

There are three phases of reentry.

8. prototype [ˈproʊtəˌtaɪp] - (n.) - A first or preliminary version of a device from which other forms are developed or copied. - Synonyms: (model, example, sample)

This is one of the few pieces of starship that isn't welded down.

9. trajectory [trəˈdʒɛktəri] - (n.) - The path followed by a projectile or object moving under the action of given forces. - Synonyms: (path, course, route)

It begins to steer the booster into its final landing trajectory.

10. relight [ˌriːˈlaɪt] - (v.) - To light again or rekindle, especially in the context of engines or flames. - Synonyms: (rekindle, relume, rekindle)

The Super Heavy's 13 center engines relight and begin an incredibly powerful landing burn.

What Exactly Happened On SpaceX's FIFTH Starship Test Flight!

SpaceX has done the impossible yet again. So we're talking about everything that happened on Starship's latest test flight, the aftermath of a historic rocket landing, and what this all means for Starship going forward. Unlike prior starship launches, Flight 5 didn't go right at the top of the launch window, which is 7am local time. The flight was delayed by boats in the Gulf of Mexico downrange from the launch site, which is pretty standard for rocket launches.

Basically, you can't have anything in the water underneath the rocket's flight path for obvious safety reasons. You never know what might fall from the sky. Luckily, the boaters were cleared away in time to make the launch window, which was only open for 30 minutes. And at 7:25am, the Super Heavy Booster 12 and Starship 30 lifted off from Starbase Texas. At this point, launching a Starship is pretty textbook. The only outlier would be that first flight number one. And luckily that seems to have been an isolated incident.

At T2 minutes 42 seconds, we get the hot stage separation. This is always very cool to see most of the booster's 33 Raptor engines shut down, while at the same time six engines on the Starship upper stage are ignited. SpaceX capitalizes on all of that energy from the ship engines to push the booster away and into a backflip maneuver. As the super heavy comes around, it's ignited 13 center engines and begun the process of slowing down. From a velocity of over 5,000 km per hour.

This is the boostback burn. At this moment, back on the ground, something very interesting is happening. Thousands of system checks are being carried out on both the super heavy itself and the tower that just launched it. The ground crew needs to be sure that every system is functional and ready to try something insane. As the booster engines shut down, it's coasted to an altitude of 96 km. And with the booster starting to free fall back to Earth, we get confirmation that the tower is go for catch.

Back at the launch site, there is a massive tower named Mechazilla with its chopstick arms wide open, waiting to receive an incoming super heavy booster. The chopstick arms are two triangular metal truss structures, each with its own large hydraulic piston that allows them to open and close independently. The Chopsticks are anchored to a sort of railcar that can run up and down the length of the tower on tracks, with the vertical movement being controlled by a cable system with a powerful electric winch at the base.

We've seen these arms used many times in the past to lift the starship and super heavy. But they were also designed to catch these rockets as well, which again, is insane even for SpaceX. Turning back to our booster as it falls through the atmosphere, we're seeing these big puffs of gas shooting out from the bottom. As far as I know, these are bursts of compressed CO2 that are being used to purge all of the excess methane gas that might have built up and been trapped in the engine section of the super heavy.

When the booster finally drops down through the clouds and gets picked up by the ground tracking camera, we can see how much heat has built up at the base of the rocket. It's just moved from the very thin atmosphere into higher densities of air while traveling at speeds over 4,000 kilometers per hour, not nearly as intense as an atmospheric reentry from orbit. But it's still literally glowing red hot. Now the booster is coming in at a pretty aggressive angle of attack. It's being steered by four aerodynamic grid fins at the top that rotate using electric motors.

And there's also lift being generated by four chines that run vertical along the base of the rocket. These aerodynamic control surfaces are all helping to direct the booster in towards the catch tower. At an altitude of about 1 km and traveling at the speed of sound, The Super Heavy's 13 center engines relight and begin an incredibly powerful landing burn. This only lasts for a few seconds, but it kills off the majority of the booster's airspeed, something I thought was really cool. As the middle ring engines shut down, you can see that the gimbal mechanisms also push the nozzles outwards and away from the center three raptors that remain lit, which probably gives the center cluster more range of motion as it begins to steer the booster into its final landing trajectory.

Up until now, the booster wasn't actually being steered towards the tower. It was pointed at an area just ahead of the launch pad, towards the beach, which presents a nice wide area for the booster to crash land and explode without damaging any of the critical ground systems, which is exactly what would have happened if there had been any significant failure with the engine relight. But in this case, all systems are go to make the final course correction into the waiting arms of Mechazilla.

The booster is roughly 100 meters above the tower when the base of the rocket pitches over at an angle towards the sea and then quickly swings back to the tower like a pendulum just above the chopstick arms. It's still falling at around 60 kilometers per hour, which is about 40 miles per hour, or typical street traffic speed. As the booster slides down through the arms, it begins to straighten out while the chopsticks close in. There is so much going on here in just a few seconds. Thankfully, SpaceX was able to include some alternate angles for us to see all of the details.

But the most important thing to keep your eye on are these two little pins on the side of the booster and the two thin rails of metal on the inner edge of the chopsticks. The catch points on the booster are located just below the grid fin. There are two metal cylinders on either side of the rocket, and each is just a bit more than six inches across. They have to come down directly on the catch rails, which are only a little bit wider than the pins. This means that the orientation of the booster has to be very precise in terms of roll.

If it comes in spun a little bit too far, clockwise or counterclockwise, then the catch is not going to be successful. On the inside edge of the catch rail is some foam padding. It's going to allow the chopstick to come in tight on the booster and slap it from both side without causing any damage. And that will make sure that the pin comes down directly on top of the rail below the padding. On the underside of the catch rail is a set of shock absorbers. This allows the chopstick rig to cradle the weight of the booster just a little bit. There's only a couple feet of travel in there, but it should be enough.

So when we see the booster start to tuck in below the chopsticks. All of these final alignments need to happen very fast. As soon as the chines of the booster are clear, the sticks can begin to clamp down and we actually see that each arm is moving independently here. The left side comes in first and then the right. Then they move together to pinch the rocket just a few meters below the catch pins. At this moment, the booster engines are throttling down to gently drop the final meter. As the pins hit the rail, the engines cut out and the full weight of the booster is cradled by the shock absorbers. By all accounts, this was a perfect success. I don't think anyone honestly imagined things going any better than they actually did.

Many of us thought that for the first catch at least, Super Heavy would come in much more slowly and maybe even hover in the air for a moment before for the catch, but the reality was just one smooth and fluent motion right down into the Mechazilla. One thing that you probably noticed was a slight excess of fire in the engine bay during and after the catch procedure. That's probably not ideal, but it's probably not the worst thing ever. I wouldn't say that the booster was on fire, it's just that there was some fire around it, and by that I mean there's still a lot of methane gas inside this rocket, and it looks like the booster is actively trying to dump as much of that as it can.

In the final seconds of the flight, you can see a ton of flaming gas being shot out from the quick disconnect point at the base of the rocket. That's where the fuel goes in, and now it's rapidly coming back out again. Also, when the engines shut down, we have to remember that the fuel pumps inside of them don't stop on a dime. They keep spinning, and that continues to dump more methane into the area that's already incredibly hot. That's probably what we see burning, and by the time the booster comes to a rest, most of the fire has already died down. The booster is clearly intact enough to later be lowered down onto the launch mount shortly after flight.

Elon Musk wrote on X later that evening that he had inspected Booster 12 himself and that it's in great shape. A few of the outer engine nozzles were warped from heating and some other minor issues, but these are easily addressed. It's not 100% clear what Elon means by that, but we can guess that the fixes he's talking about will come with the next upgrade to starship's engine, the Raptor version 3. With that design, SpaceX engineers have moved almost all of the Raptor's plumbing inside the metal casing of the engine itself. So there are significantly fewer points where anything can leak out. And there's even less stuff that can potentially catch on fire.

The only visible damage on the booster post flight is just a few steel panels missing. This is a photo from Interstellar Gateway showing one of the chines inside is a pressurized tank. This is one of the few pieces of starship that isn't welded down. So it's probably just a bad fastener that resulted in this coming apart. As Elon says, the eventual goal with this booster is to make it rapidly reusable. So ideally, just one hour of downtime between landing and launching again. Which means that any amount of fire in the engine bay is not going to work in the long term.

But fire suppression is the easy part compared to what we just watched. Now our attention turns to the ship stage. Throughout the return of the booster, Starship has been powering its way to an altitude of 150km. At almost the same time that super heavy is caught, the ship's engines shut down and begin a coast phase around the globe. The ship's momentum will carry it to a maximum height of 212km above the surface. But the velocity of just over 26,6000km per hour is not quite enough to keep it in space for one full orbit around the Earth.

At t46 minutes, the ship begins to dip back down into the atmosphere. And this is where the second big show of the morning begins. There are three phases of reentry. The first is when the ship begins to encounter low drag from the upper atmosphere. This is up around 90 km, where the body of the ship is impacting air molecules, adding incredibly high speeds. But the density of that air is so low that nothing much is going to happen. We can see that the hot gas is starting to build up underneath the ship, but there's minimal effect on the velocity so far.

As the ship descends down, it starts to encounter higher densities of gas. And the energy released by impacting that gas with a very large object moving at a very high speed is going to create a lot of heat. The gas is compressed to the point where it changes state into plasma, which is that amazing color that we see build up underneath the ship. This phase is called peak heating, and it's going to last for about 10 minutes. You might notice that once the ship gets down to an altitude of around 69 km per hour, it kind of just stays up there for a long time.

The ship is using its body and flaps to create lift, which is preventing it from falling deeper down into the dense atmosphere. So it's losing a lot of velocity before it starts to encounter too much drag. Down below 60 km, the ship has passed the peak heating phase, which sounds like we're out of the woods, but it actually means that the real test has just begun. This third phase is high dynamic pressure. Now, in addition to incredibly high heat, there is a rapidly increasing amount of physical resistance being encountered by the ship.

A few things to consider here. This version of Starship has a new and improved heat shield that is being tested for the first time. So in addition to the black hexagon tiles, there is an underlying layer of protection that uses an ablative material. Ablation is just a fancy way to say melting or disintegrating, which is what's happening when you see sparks coming off of the ship. SpaceX purposely removed a few of the main tiles to expose the secondary heat shield for this flight, just to see what would happen. They also covered some of their regular tiles with an outer layer of aluminum.

From what I got, they're using the exposed aluminum kind of like a thermometer. We know what temperature aluminum melts at, so the condition of that metal after the flight would give us an idea of the thermal environment it's been put through. If there's still a ship to examine post flight, Starship Flight 5 definitely fared better than its predecessor, which lost the majority of its front control flaps. Flight 5 did still experience some burn through at the hinge mechanism, just not as much, which shows that SpaceX is moving in the right direction.

It's important to note that this particular design of the starship that we're watching right now is already an outdated model. There's a version 2 ship that's already begun production back in the new factory at Starbase, and the biggest difference between V1 and V2 is the design of those forward flaps. So I don't see this as anything to worry about right now. If we're still getting burn through around the flaps on Starship V2, then that might be a good time to panic down. At around 40 km of altitude, the ship has passed through the worst of it, we can see that there is still a lot of heat and fire and sparks flying, but we're intact and preparing for the next big event, the landing burn.

Thankfully, we get a much more clear view of the landing procedure this time around. The engines relight, the base of the ship flips down towards the water, and we get what appears to be a soft touchdown. Then the rocket begins to tip over, and now we're definitely on fire, though. As SpaceX cuts to a surprise camera angle from a very nearby floating platform, we can see the entire ship burst into flames and quickly nosedive. The final image is the ship's tail bobbing and flaming just above the waves.

The good news is that the ship landed precisely on target. The bad news is we're not getting any opportunity to inspect what's left of it. So what did we learn? Well, the super heavy booster is definitely a recoverable rocket. SpaceX can get it back down to the ground in one piece, but it's not reusable yet. They've still got some work to do there. While the ship is getting closer to recoverability, it's going to be a much steeper hill to climb. And Starship V2 should solve many of the issues that we are seeing right now.

The next major milestone for this rocket system is going to be achieving a full orbit. That means getting the ship up to an even higher velocity, circling the Earth, and then performing a deorbit burn for a controlled reentry, potentially even deploying a payload along the way. So there's still very much to come, so stay tuned.

Spacex, Technology, Innovation, Rocket Recovery, Starship, Reusable Rockets, The Space Race