Watch Live: Elon Musk’s Starship Launches On 4th Test Flight

Update (0852ET):

SpaceX’s Starship launches from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on its 4th flight.

Watch the launch event live here:

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One day after Boeing's long-delayed crewed Starliner space capsule launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, SpaceX is preparing for the 4th test flight of the massive Starship rocket.

Hours ago, SpaceX's Elon Musk posted on X that the launch time of Starship is stuck for 0720 Texas time (0820 ET) at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.

Launch tmrw morning at 7:20 Texas time pic.twitter.com/CJJTyPvT8L

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 6, 2024

Starship is the most giant rocket always built, standing nearly 400 feet tall erstwhile stacked with its “Super Heavy” booster. It surpasses the tallness of the Saturn V rockets that transported Apollo astronauts to the moon.

Targeting Thursday, June 6 for Starship’s 4 flight test.

A 120-minute launch window opens at 7:00 a.m. CT → https://t.co/bJFjLCiTbK pic.twitter.com/jWdhCAyk8I

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 4, 2024

Today's 4 test flight will proceed advanced Starship's advancement and dense focus on a deeper re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

Musk late gates on X that Starship’s “main goal of this mission is to get much deeper into the atmosphere during re-entry, perfectly through max heat.”

Starship Flight 4, with many improvements, aiming to launch on Thursday!

The main goal of this mission is to get much deeper into the atmosphere during reentry, ideally through max heating. https://t.co/8cE1dTQ9nw

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 2, 2024

Rocket blog Spaceflight Now provided more insight into the mishaps during test flight 3 and how systems were upgraded to guarantee a deeper re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere for today’s test flight:

During Flight 3, the advanced phase began to rotation uncontrollably, preventing the vehicle from performing a light of 1 of its six Raptor engines. However, thanks to its ability to connect to the Starlink satellite net network, another part of SpaceX's business, the Rocket was able to stream back advanced definition camera views showing its re-entry through a blank of plasma.

"The catch of attitude control results in an off-nominal entry, with the ship seeing much longer than anticated heat on both protected and unprotected areas," SpaceX said in a post-launch blog. "The most likely root origin of the unplanned rotation was determined to be cloging of the valves responsive for rotation control. SpaceX has since added additional rotation control thrillers on upcoming Starships to improve attribute control redundancy and upgraded hardware for improved stableness to blockage.”

Meanwhile, the Super dense Booster from the last flight besides prematurely shut down six out of 13 Raptor engines utilized during the bootback burn, which remained offline erstwhile it accessed to execute a landing burn.

"The booster had lower than expected landing burn thrust erstwhile contact was lost at approximatery 462 meters in altitude over the Gulf of Mexico and just under 7 minutes into the mission," SpaceX stood. “The most likely root origin for the early boostback burn shutdown was determined to be continued filter blockage where liquid oxygen is proposed to the engines, leading to a destiny of inlet force in engine oxygen turbopumps.”

“Super dense boosters for Flight 4 and beyond will get additional hardware inside oxygen tanks to further improve propellant filtration capacity.”

All of these test flights are part of Starship’s improvement process. The hope is to commission the world’s largest rocket for moon and Mars missions by the end of the decade or the early 2030s.

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Watch the launch event live here: