SpaceX Pushes Starship to New Extremes During Dramatic Fourth Flight Test

It’s time for Starship to take flight once again, aiming to splashdown in the Indian Ocean on its way back from its fourth launch to demonstrate the rocket’s reusability.

Update: June 6, 10:17 a.m. ET: Starship lifted off from the Boca Chica launch mount at 8:50 a.m. ET. The first stage of the flight went smoothly despite one Raptor engine conking out. Stage separation went well, with the Super Heavy booster performing an unprecedented soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Some 40 minutes later, the upper stage began its reentry maneuver. Onboard cameras showed plasma and bright specks flying from the rocket, along with dramatic views of a shredded forward flap. Remarkably, the upper stage seemed to survive the abuse and attempt a soft landing, though it’s not clear how far it got along the process (the engines did appear to turn on for a bit). Regardless, SpaceX collected a tremendous amount of data during this fourth mission.

Update: June 6, 8:23 a.m. ET: The SpaceX broadcast is now live and available below. Launch is currently slated for 8:50 a.m. ET. The broadcast is also available at SpaceX.

Update: June 6, 7:16 a.m. ET: There appears to be a bit of a delay this morning. As NSF reports on its live feed, Starship will launch no earlier than 8:49 a.m. ET, as ground teams continue to prep the rocket.

Original article follows.

SpaceX is targeting Thursday, June 6 for the fourth test flight of a new Starship prototype. The megarocket is scheduled to liftoff during a 120-minute launch window that starts at 8 a.m. ET from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, according to SpaceX.

The launch will be live streamed on the SpaceX website, as well as through the company’s account on X. The livestream is scheduled to begin at 7:30 a.m. ET. A number of third party providers have livestreams available, which you can find below.

The company received the launch license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday, allowing it to launch the 400-foot-tall (122-meter) megarocket for the fourth time.

Starship’s first two flights, performed on April 20 and November 18 of last year, didn’t go exactly as planned, with the rocket exploding each time above the Gulf of Mexico.

The last time the rocket took to the skies was on March 14, and Starship achieved some major milestones for its third flight. The rocket performed a successful stage separation, a full-duration burn of the second-stage engines, an internal propellant-transfer demonstration for NASA, and a test of the Starlink dispenser door. The mission lasted for an hour and 49 minutes before the upper stage disintegrated to pieces during reentry.

For Starship’s fourth fully integrated test flight, SpaceX is shifting the focus from launching the rocket to orbit to being able to return both of its stages to Earth. The main objectives of the test flight include executing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico with the Super Heavy booster, as well as achieving a controlled re-entry of Starship.

“The main goal of this mission is to get much deeper into the atmosphere during reentry, ideally through max heating,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X.

There’s a lot riding on SpaceX’s ongoing development of Starship so that it is capable of landing humans on the Moon as part of NASA’s planned Artemis 3 mission, which is currently scheduled for September 2026. The company pushes its megarocket to the limit each time it takes flight, and we expect Starship to put on another show during its fourth mission.

Want to know more about Elon Musk’s space venture? Check out our full coverage of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket and the SpaceX Starlink internet satellite megaconstellation. And for more spaceflight in your life, follow us on X and bookmark Gizmodo’s dedicated Spaceflight page.