SpaceX shares photos of Starship ahead of sixth flight on Tuesday

By Trevor Mogg Published November 17, 2024

SpaceX's Starship ahead of its sixth test flight. — The Starship on the launchpad at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas ahead of its sixth test flight. This is one of four images shared by SpaceX on Sunday. SpaceX

SpaceX is just a couple of days away from sending its enormous Starship rocket on its sixth test flight from its facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

The mission had originally targeted Monday, November 18, for the launch of the vehicle — comprising the main-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft — but on Friday, SpaceX pushed the launch to Tuesday, November 19. Here’s how to watch a livestream of the mission.

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The Elon Musk-led spaceflight company has just released a set of images showing the 120-meter-tall Starship stacked and pretty much ready to fly.

“Propellant load test and preflight checkouts complete ahead of Starship’s sixth flight test,” SpaceX said in a post on X.

Propellant load test and preflight checkouts complete ahead of Starship's sixth flight test → https://t.co/oIFc3u9laE pic.twitter.com/r6XNKyY2Zf

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 17, 2024

The Starship took its first test flight in April 2023, but it only lasted a matter of minutes before an anomaly prompted the mission team to blow up the rocket in midair over the Gulf of Mexico.

But each subsequent flight showed improvements in every aspect of the rocket’s performance. On the fifth flight last month, SpaceX performed a successful and truly spectacular “catch” of the 70-meter-tall Super Heavy at its first attempt, a challenging maneuver that took place as the booster returned to Earth following its deployment of the Starship spacecraft to orbit.

Packing a colossal 17 million pounds of thrust at launch, the Starship is the most powerful rocket ever to get off the ground. Once fully tested, NASA and SpaceX want to use the vehicle to transport crew and cargo to the moon, Mars, and possibly beyond. It could even be configured to fly approximately 100 people in a single flight, though a mission of that magnitude is a long way off.

One of the Starship’s first big tests will be to use a modified version of the upper-stage spacecraft to land two NASA astronauts on the lunar surface in the Artemis III mission, which is currently scheduled for 2026.

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Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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Cool time-lapse shows SpaceX Crew-10 arriving at space station

SpaceX's Crew-10 arriving at the ISS in March 2025.

Space station astronaut Don Pettit has shared a cool time-lapse of SpaceX’s Crew-10 Crew Dragon spacecraft arriving at the orbital facility on Sunday.

The footage, which runs more quickly than the actual speed, shows the capsule approaching the docking port on the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits at around 250 miles above Earth. Pettit posted a short and long version of the spacecraft's autonomous approach:

Space

SpaceX will launch Tesla’s humanoid Optimus robot to Mars next year

Optimus Gen 2 humanoid robot by Tesla.

The year 2025 is going to be pivotal for Tesla’s humanoid robot plans, if the words of CEO Elon Musk are to be believed. But next year could mark an astronomical milestone for the company’s Optimus robot, in quite the literal sense.
Taking to X, Musk mentioned in a post that SpaceX will put an Optimus robot on Mars atop its flagship Starship rocket by the end of 2026. Just over a week ago, the Starship broke apart following a launch test, the second such failure this year.
“Starship departs for Mars at the end of next year, carrying Optimus,” Musk wrote in a post on X. “If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely.”
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859078074303713447

This won’t be the first time Musk is making such a claim. Back in November last year, Musk mentioned that SpaceX was capable of sending “several uncrewed Starships” to the red planet within a couple of years and that the payload would include Optimus robots.
Tesla introduced a refined version of the Optimus robot at a glitzy event late in 2024. At the event, Musk told the crowd that Optimus was “the biggest product ever of any kind.” It was later reported that the robots were remotely operated by humans at the event.
Later, during the company’s Q4 2024 earnings calls, Musk shed more light on production plans, adding that the product has a revenue potential higher than $10 trillion. He also mentioned plans to manufacture thousands of humanoid robots in 2025.

Space

Watch SpaceX launch a relief crew for ‘stuck’ Starliner astronauts

At 7:03 p.m. EDT, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, launched from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, March 14, 2025..

Four astronauts are on their way to the International Space Station (ISS). After several delays, the members of Crew-10 lifted off in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft using a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:03 p.m. ET on Saturday night. The crew includes NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

“Congratulations to our NASA and SpaceX teams on the 10th crew rotation mission under our commercial crew partnership. This milestone demonstrates NASA’s continued commitment to advancing American leadership in space and driving growth in our national space economy,” said NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro. “Through these missions, we are laying the foundation for future exploration, from low Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars. Our international crew will contribute to innovative science research and technology development, delivering benefits to all humanity.”

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