Well folks, it’s time for Starship IFT-4!
| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-06-06 12:50 |
|---|---|
| Scheduled for (local) | 2024-06-06 07:50 (CDT) |
| Launch Window (UTC) | 2024-06-06 12:00 to 2024-03-14 14:00 (120 minutes) |
| Launch site | OLM-A, SpaceX Starbase, TX, USA. |
| Booster | B11 |
| Ship | S29 |
| Booster landing | Soft water landing in the Gulf of Mexico |
| Ship landing | Indian Ocean |
Webcasts
| Stream | Link |
|---|---|
| Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FkQAU5sLck |
| Everyday Astronaut | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VESowgMbjA |
| Spaceflight Now | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFkqZF-Ss7o |
| NASASpaceflight | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTkhv4fvOgA |
| LabPadre | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c49s4fiyM3A |
| The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiMpEWtojmY |
| SpaceX | https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1798689697184764071 |
| The Space Devs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix-la4IqYlA |
Stats
Sourced from NextSpaceflight and r/SpaceX:
☑️ 2nd Starship Full Stack launch this year
☑️ 4th Starship Full Stack launch overall
☑️ 60th SpaceX launch this year
☑️ 371st SpaceX launch overall (including Starship hops)
☑️ 2nd launch from OLM-A this year
☑️ 83 days, 22:35:00 turnaround for this pad
Mission Details 🚀
- SpaceX website (current): Starship’s Fourth Flight Test
- SpaceX website (archived 2024-06-05): Starship’s Fourth Flight Test
Link to Starship Dev thread
We’re still flying half a ship!
Absolutely incredible performance. There are obviously some areas for improvement (booster engine out, flap seals), but the booster soft landing and ship controlled reentry were both huge steps forward.
On to IFT-5! Put some payloads on it!
Confirmed payload for IFT-4! /S
Landing burn startup!
Edit: And shutdown!
Couldn’t really see how the landing burn went, but the telemetry indicated that velocity slowed to just a few km/h at zero altitude.
I can’t believe they (maybe) completed the landing burn with a shredded flap.
Between that and the booster engine issues, this seems like one of the best possible learning scenarios.
If you watch carefully during landing burn, you can see it actuate a little but then sheer sideways. It was still attached but uhh, slightly less reusable than expected lol. It looked pretty wedged in place as the final shots show the ship fully stop moving. Just incredible! I really hope we see any kind of tracking shots externally in the near future.
Soft landing for super heavy ✅ Starship cruising in space ✅
A couple of engines failed, but wow, so much improvement on each flight.
The Super Heavy hover looked way more stable than I was expecting. Amazing progress.
The gridfins started getting active and I got some bad flashbacks, but they reigned it in for a really impressive soft landing
One of the forward flaps appears to be disintegrating…
Mission Control Audio: “Ship approaching max-Q. Temperatures are dropping.”
Mission Control Audio: “Ship passed through max-Q.”
Mission Control Audio: “Starship is subsonic.”