Following a transient hold at t minus 40 seconds, Starship took to the morning skies just after 7 a.m. CT from Starbase, Texas.
The countdown flowed easily because the SpaceX team filled the big rocket within the pre-dawn hours, working no issues outside, ensuring there have been no wayward boats downrange.
After the hold was lifted, the clock counted down. Once t-minus 3 seconds, the 33 Raptor engines roared to life and commenced ramping their thrust levels up, and at t+ 2 seconds, Booster 9 and Ship 25 thundered away from the orbital launch mount, clearing the launch tower in a matter of seconds.
Congratulations to your entire SpaceX team on an exciting second integrated flight test of Starship!
Starship successfully lifted off under the facility of all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy Booster and made it through stage separation pic.twitter.com/JnCvLAJXPi
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 18, 2023
The primary phase of flight was perfect, with all 33 Raptor engines performing nominally, a marked improvement over the primary test flight. Ship 25 and Booster 9 cleared Max Q just over a minute into the flight per the decision out on the SpaceX launch stream.
At t+ 2 minutes and 50 seconds, 30 Raptor engines shut down on Booster 9, and Starship lit all 6 Raptor engines to drag away, the first-ever successful hot staging for SpaceX.
Booster 9 then began its flip to organize for the boost backburn, but based on the stream, it appeared to possibly over-rotate, and the flight termination system destroyed the rocket.
Stage separation! pic.twitter.com/PipaCW1PDT
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 18, 2023
For just over the subsequent 5 minutes, all 6 Raptor engines on Ship 25 were firing nominally until SpaceX seemingly lost signal with the vehicle, possibly being the rationale the automated flight termination system activated. This has yet to be confirmed by SpaceX. Based on the stream, engine shutdown appears to occur t+ 8 minutes and 4 seconds, followed by flight termination at t+ 8 minutes and seven seconds.
Overall, this was an enormous improvement over the primary test flight. SpaceX showed much greater reliability within the Raptor engines, with not one of the 33 Raptor engines malfunctioning in the course of the first stage burn, a flawless hot stage, and a really smooth Ship 25 burn until SpaceX lost signal.
The launch pad seemingly faired a lot better this time around as well. Various live streams from the launch pad didn’t show giant chunks of debris flying after lift-off, which may help set SpaceX up for a much faster return to flight for Starship following their mishap investigation.
How do you’re thinking that SpaceX did the 2nd time around? Vast improvements, or do you’re thinking that they need loads more work first?