On Nov. 19, SpaceX launched its Starship vehicle on its sixth test flight. While the flight showcased key technical advancements, such as a successful engine relight on the Starship upper stage, it also highlighted the challenges of reusability, with the Super Heavy booster failing to land back at the launch tower.
This incremental progress for Starship comes amid far greater shifts in the environment in which the vehicle will operate. The election of Donald Trump as president could upend space policy, and Elon Musk’s prominent role in supporting Trump during the campaign — and being by his side since the election — could give the SpaceX CEO unprecedented influence to reshape that policy.
The incoming Trump administration has offered few statements about its plans for NASA or Defense Department space programs in the two weeks since the election. That includes not announcing an official “agency review team” for NASA, the members of the transition team who come into the agency to learn about its activities and, in some cases, identify problems.
“The job of the teams coming in, first of all, is just to get a sense about where the agencies are,” said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, who served on the NASA transition team for incoming president George W. Bush. “Part of what you’re trying to do is figure out what are going to be some of the immediate landmines that are going to come up in the first six months. Political people hate surprises.”
An example of that, he noted, was the discovery during the Bush transition that the space station program was $4.8 billion over budget. “So, at 11 o’clock at night, I go over to the OMB team and say, ‘Hi, I’m Scott. I’m from the NASA team. Got a spare $4.8 bil? We’re a little short,’” he recalled during a panel discussion Nov. 12 at the Beyond Earth Symposium in Washington.
A similar landmine may be persistent air leaks in a Russian module of the ISS. At a Nov. 13 meeting of the ISS Advisory Committee, Bob Cabana, the new chair of the committee, noted disagreements between Russian and American officials on the cause and severity of the leaks. “The Russians believe that continued operations are safe, but they can’t prove to our satisfaction that they are, and the U.S. believes that it’s not safe, but we can’t prove to the Russians’ satisfaction that that’s the case,” Cabana said.
“I certainly believe that NASA is paying a lot of attention to it,” Pace said of those air leaks, “but if I was an incoming transition person, I would want to do my own forensics on that and understand very deeply what was going on because nothing will ratchet to the top of a list faster than anything involving human spaceflight safety.”
Pace said he didn’t see a problem with Musk pursuing Starship launches to Mars. “If you want to put a couple Starships on the surface of Mars, I think that is eminently doable and would be inspiring and interesting,” he said. “I’m not so sure about putting people on those missions because I think a lot of other things would have to happen first.”
Some, though, are worried that this strategy might be done at the expense of the current Artemis lunar exploration campaign. Before the election, Jim Free, NASA associate administrator and the person likely to become acting administrator at the start of the new administration, warned against making major changes to that effort to return humans to the moon, without mentioning any candidate or alternative approach.
“We need to stick with the plan that we have. That doesn’t mean we can’t perform better,” he said at the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium less than a week before the election. “But we need to keep this destination from a human spaceflight perspective.”
“If we lose that,” he warned, “I believe we will fall apart and we will wander, and other people in this world will pass us by.”
Greg Autry, who served on the first Trump administration’s NASA transition team, offered a similar note of caution. “If it was just to show that we could beat China, if it was another flags and footprints mission, then I’d be for that,” Autry, currently associate provost of space commercialization and strategy at the University of Central Florida, said at the Beyond Earth Symposium. “But the moon has both strategic purposes, militarily, and economic development purposes that Mars doesn’t.”
He spoke specifically about resources on the moon, like water ice, that could be valuable to future space exploration but which are concentrated in polar craters. “Those are limited resources, and getting to them early is critical. So I honestly think we have to do both, and I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time.”
Artemis, though, “has got to be fixed,” he said, citing problems with “every single major component of the system” for getting humans back to the moon. “So how do we simplify what became a fairly complex and Rube Goldbergian sort of architecture in some ways?”
That could mean an enhanced role for Starship. He suggested a “full Starship stack to the moon” as one solution, which would do away with many other elements, like SLS and Orion, but may require enhancements to Starship. Another approach would be to mix and match other capabilities, like having Dragon send crews to Earth orbit to dock with a Blue Moon lunar lander that then goes to the moon and back.
“I think that needs to be looked at very seriously, immediately, whenever the new team comes into place, and some decisions made swiftly to, A, get us to the moon before the Chinese, who are targeting 2030 and appear to maybe be ahead of schedule, and B, make sure that we have the long-term ability to stay there,” he concluded.
During the panel, Garver asked if SLS and Orion would continue in the next administration. None of her fellow panelists, which included Autry, Pace, and others who worked in the Bush and Trump administrations, raised their hands. “Not as they are,” Pace said.
There was less agreement among the panel about how the Trump administration might affect other aspects of space policy, like the role of international cooperation. Garver said she thought the next administration would deemphasize it. “It is by its nature slow,” she said, “which is the opposite of what these folks have in mind.”
Pace disagreed. “I think international engagement is going to be an important part of the Trump administration because it’s part of larger national interests,” he said. “There can be different styles to it, different emphases on it, but it’s absolutely going to be central.”
Then there is the question of who will lead NASA in the next administration. Pace said he expected Musk to play a role here as well. “I think the area where he is going to have probably the biggest impact in the near term is personnel. People are policy.”
He recommended that the next administrator be someone focused on implementing programs. “It’s really somebody in program and project management, system engineering and integration: very dull-sounding kinds of things but really, really crucial,” he said.
That person could end up leaning heavily on Starship to carry out what the administration wants to do in space. That made the most recent Starship launch, while only an incremental step forward technically, a harbinger of a much greater leap in what the U.S. might do differently in space exploration — and how.
Starship Flight 6: progress and setbacks
Nov. 19 Starship launch blends tech progress with politics.
SpaceX launched Starship on its sixth test flight Nov. 19 but called off a planned landing of the Super Heavy booster back at the launch site.
The event drew significant attention, including a visit from President-elect Donald Trump, who joined SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at the Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, to witness the launch.
“I’m heading to the Great State of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever to be elevated,” Trump wrote on Truth Social ahead of the mission, wishing Musk and the “great patriots” at SpaceX good luck. After the launch, Trump posted photos from the event and congratulated Musk, underscoring the close relationship between the two, who have worked together closely since Trump’s election victory two weeks earlier.
The Starship/Super Heavy vehicle lifted off at 5 p.m. Eastern from SpaceX’s Starbase test site. Liftoff took place at the opening of a 30-minute launch window, with no problems reported during the countdown.
The Super Heavy booster, known as Booster 13, separated from the Starship upper stage about two minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff. The booster began its return to the launch site but, a little more than a minute later, controllers announced a “booster offshore divert,” meaning that the booster would not return to the launch pad.
SpaceX didn’t specify what caused the booster to divert. Instead, it made a powered “landing” in the Gulf of Mexico just offshore, tipping over and exploding seconds later. This marked at least a minor setback for SpaceX after the company successfully “caught” the booster back at the launch tower during the previous test flight on Oct. 13.
Despite the booster’s failure to land intact, the mission achieved important milestones. The Starship upper stage, known as Ship 31, reached a suborbital trajectory and briefly reignited one of its Raptor engines in space, demonstrating a critical capability for deorbit burns on future missions.
Starship then performed a reentry over the Indian Ocean. Before the flight, the company said it was changing the reentry profile, “purposefully stressing the limits of flap control” among other changes, and also was using an older version of the thermal protection system than the previous flight.
“Do not be surprised if this is not a smooth flight to splashdown today,” Kate Tice, a SpaceX webcast host, explained before launch. “We are intentionally looking for how far we can push and discover the vehicle’s true limits as we plan for future ship return and catch.”
SpaceX plans to eventually return Starship to the launch site with a catch like that used for the Super Heavy booster.
Starship survived reentry with some visible damage to its flaps and heat shield. The vehicle made a powered soft landing in the ocean 65 and a half minutes after liftoff, tipping over on its side and floating on the surface. The shift in launch time from morning to afternoon meant that the splashdown took place in daylight hours in the Indian Ocean, allowing for better video coverage of Starship’s return.
The flight drew praise from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who wrote on X: “Exciting to see the Raptor engine restart in space—major progress towards orbital flight. Starship’s success is #Artemis’ success. Together, we will return humanity to the Moon & set our sights on Mars.” Nelson’s remarks underscored the connection between SpaceX’s commercial achievements and NASA’s ambitions under the Artemis program.
During the webcast, SpaceX announced planned upgrades for the next Starship iteration, including larger propellant tanks, a 25% greater payload capacity (up to 1,500 tons) and redesigned forward flaps positioned for better heat protection during reentry. The company has not announced a date for the next flight.
This flight was enabled by SpaceX’s existing FAA launch license, which also covered the Oct. 13 mission. The FAA determined that the limited changes for Flight 6 were “within the scope of what has been previously analyzed,” allowing the company to avoid modifications to its license.
Nov. 19 Starship test flight: Key facts
Mission Number: Sixth integrated flight of Starship and Super Heavy.
Launch Site: SpaceX Starbase, Boca Chica, Texas.
Launch Time: 5 p.m. Eastern.
Super Heavy Booster:
- Designation: Booster 13
- Aborted landing; diverted to Gulf of Mexico, tipped over, and exploded.
Starship Upper Stage:
- Designation: Ship 31
- Reignited a Raptor engine in space, demonstrating deorbit burn capability.
- Successfully reentered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.
- Powered soft landing in the ocean; floated on its side.
Flight Duration: 65 minutes, 30 seconds
Key Test Objectives:
- Stress testing flap control systems.
- Validating older thermal protection systems.
Next Steps for Starship:
- Larger propellant tanks to increase payload capacity by 25%, from 1,200 to 1,500 tons.
- Redesigned flaps for better heat protection.
Next Launch: No date announced; SpaceX plans to incorporate design upgrades before the next test flight.
Regulatory Notes: Flight conducted under existing FAA license, which also covered the Oct. 13 test.
This article was modified from an article that originally appeared on The Space Review. The modified version was also published in the December 2024 issue of SpaceNews Magazine.
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