Watch SpaceX's 4th Starship Launch Test

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Speaker 1: 4, 3, 2. Speaker 2: Vehicle is pitching down range. Speaker 1: [00:00:30] All right, 30 seconds into flight, the rumbles are still building here in the Raptor's Nest, we're seeing 32 out of 33 engines lit on the super heavy right now. Coming up shortly, it's going to be max two. That maximum aerodynamic pressure as we go uphill on the vehicle. Speaker 2: [00:01:00] Max Q. Speaker 1: Alright, we just passed through Max Q, so we're going to continue on up. We still have about Speaker 2: Vehicle is supersonic a Speaker 1: Minute and 30 seconds until we get to stage separation. Starship now flying faster than the speed of sound Speaker 2: Booster, engine cutoff shape ignition [00:01:30] stage separation, confirmed boost back burn, startup Speaker 1: Hot stage, confirmed ship under its own power booster. Boosting back looks like all 13 are lit. Kate, we've got a booster on the way back to the Gulf at a ship all the way to space Speaker 2: Ship power telemetry nominal. Speaker 3: Alright, the first stage [00:02:00] currently performing the boost back burn. This is expected to last a little over one minute. This propels the booster back toward the coast taking it to a landing in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. As you can see on your screen in the bottom left hand corner, we were only using the 13 center engines. Basically from here on Speaker 2: Shut down, Speaker 3: Heard confirmation there of good burn shut Speaker 2: H, Speaker 3: [00:02:30] Lots of excitement. So right here, this is our view of the jettisoned hot stage. As we mentioned, this is a temporary fix to help reduce the weight of the booster. We have the super heavy booster. Future iterations will have a lighter weight integrated hot stage structure that won't need to be jettisoned. [00:03:00] Now after we jettison that hot stage, the booster will begin to attempt its water landing in the Gulf. In the meantime, the ship will coast for about 40 minutes or so, up to an altitude of 214 kilometers. And after its coast phase it will attempt a controlled reentry including a flip maneuver and a landing burn just before splashing down in the Indian ocean. But as a reminder, we are not Speaker 2: [00:03:30] Trajectory nominal. Speaker 3: Good news there trajectory is looking good for the ship, which is on the right hand side of your screen. Speaker 4: As a reminder for booster, the primary goal today is to do a landing burn and a splash down in the water. And we are just about 30 seconds away from that landing burn expecting to begin and an incredible view from the forward portion of the booster. This is basically on top of the super heavy booster [00:04:00] where we have jettison that hot stage. So now we can see this incredible view of earth as it's making its way back down to the Gulf of Mexico. Right now the booster is using the four hypersonic grid fins to guide itself through atmospheric reentry and we are expecting that landing burn here and we [00:04:30] will be igniting 13 engines and this is a great view. On your left hand side is a view is three views from the booster and your right hand side, a view from the ship. And you can see those grid fins on your left hand screen rotating and turning to guide the booster. And Speaker 5: There's landing guys, that landing bird just begun and you can see the water below [00:05:00] And we have Splashdown, congratulations to the state X team Speaker 2: Ship has entered terminal guidance. Speaker 3: That was absolutely incredible. The Speaker 2: First [00:05:30] successful Speaker 3: Splash down of the super heavy booster. Love seeing it just tip over into the water before losing that footage. Now the next milestone is coming up. In about under a minute signal ship is going to shut off its raptor engines ship Speaker 2: Cut off, Speaker 3: Which we see right there. As we mentioned before, today's test flight is not an orbital flight but rather one that demonstrates the star ship's orbital capability. [00:06:00] So right now we are under power with just the three center Raptor engines expecting those and just there we could see that those have also successfully cut Speaker 6: Off. Speaker 2: FDS is saved. Speaker 3: What an incredible nominal Speaker 2: Orbit [00:06:30] search. Speaker 3: Oh, there's great news there. The call out, we were hoping to hear amazing views once again from Starship. We have our second Starship in space. These live views being brought to us by starlink, which is onboard the ship. Dan, what an incredible view we have. Once again, so exciting. We got another ship in space Speaker 1: Right now. We're getting closer to reentry again, we're going to be moving at hypersonic speeds [00:07:00] more than five times the speed of sound. We're going to see that plasma start to build. So Kate Jesse, excitement coming up. Speaker 3: Yeah, as you can see with that view on your screen, again, high def brought to us by starlink. We can see the plasma beginning to build as the ship is getting closer to the Earth's atmosphere. Now let's talk a little bit about how star will survive reentry hopefully and control itself. Speaker 4: Exactly. We've been talking about this entire flight test. There's 18,000 [00:07:30] hexagonal ceramic tiles surrounding the bottom portion or the earth facing side of the Speaker 7: Ship. A hundred kilometers altitude, good altitude for entry, Speaker 4: Great call outs there. Now during atmospheric reentry, the vehicle is going to see temperatures as high as 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit or over 1400 degrees Celsius. So those tiles are there to help protect the vehicle from this extreme heat Speaker 7: Vehicle is passing through 85 kilometers. Altitude to flaps have control of the vehicle. Speaker 4: Great news flaps have control of [00:08:00] the vehicle. That's exactly what we want to hear for this flight test. Yeah, again, we are going to be doing a propulsive landing instead of a more traditional means like parachutes and we are expecting reentry to begin here in just about a minute. Reentry awesome view that we have here. Speaker 7: Starship trajectory. Speaker 3: This is the same view that we had when we first returned from the coast phase. Again, this is looking at the side of one of the flaps. Speaker 1: This camera [00:08:30] view is looking right at one of the forward flaps and we're strategically putting some cameras around the vehicle to just look at the different areas. Looks like we got the flap starting to come apart a little. Speaker 3: Yeah, it does appear that we have a little bit of burn through there. We can see pieces of the vehicle flying off. What a show it has been. It's been like [00:09:00] watching Interstellar or something. Speaker 4: This is wild to see this, but the ship is still coming down, which is incredible to see. Speaker 3: How far can it go? That is the question. Keep Speaker 4: Your eye on the altitude in the bottom right hand corner. We're at 54 kilometers right now. Speaker 3: Now ultimately the data is the payload. Today we've been saying it multiple times. Our teams are sitting reviewing the data live, [00:09:30] learning where the hotspots are. As you can see, there's an obvious hotspot there with the flap and learning how we can improve this design. The goal was to get as far through this high heat reentry as possible. Okay, we can see that flap actuating Speaker 6: Through the glass Speaker 7: Through 10 kilomet. Speaker 3: Okay. The next milestone [00:10:00] will be initiation of the flip maneuver and landing burn. Keep an eye on the bottom right corner of your screen for those three center engines to relight. They will gimbal or angle so that the ship flips itself back up vertical and hopefully lands in a vertical position. Speaker 4: And the crowd is very excited to get this view of that flaps still maneuvering. Speaker 7: Sorry, just passing through five kilometers. Altitude. Speaker 4: [00:10:30] This is incredible. We're getting very close to the splash down. Speaker 3: These fireflies are such a good sign of life right now. We wish we could see more, but we'll take it. Speaker 7: Starship is at altitude Terminal Speaker 8: Startup [00:11:00] Starship. Speaker 6: Alright, Speaker 3: Good news there. Speaker 1: [00:11:30] The Landberg shutdown was commanded. Wow. I mean it was a little bit of use your imagination as you were going down what we could actually see, but we were able to hear the ship did its landing burn it sounded like. Like ship landing, burn shut. Got two engines. [00:12:00] There's the final call for landing burn. Shut down, but we'll go back through all the data. But we did get confirmation that a landing burn took place. Starship made it through reentry and did its first ever landing, burn.