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
That was incredible. Can’t wait for ground footage of the ship landing burn.
Hot staging, and boostback burn!
Starship is stacked.
Road closure is scheduled for “possible flight”.
New T-0 is 20 minutes into the launch window.
Weather is looking good.
Go America and Defender 1 range security boat move into position. Hopefully no wayward boats.
Official SpaceX livestream on X: https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1OwxWYzDXjWGQ
Confirmed payload for IFT-4! /S
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1798673089410294067
Now targeting 7:50 a.m. CT for launch of Starship’s fourth flight test. Weather conditions are 95% favorable. The webcast will go live ~30 minutes ahead of liftoff
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1798682619435229396
The Starship team is go for prop load
Propellant load is under way.
SpaceX webcast has started. Kate Tice and Jessie Anderson are hosting.
Awesome seeing condensation moving up as fuel gets loaded
Ship R-vac engines cutoff, followed shortly by center engines cutoff, and nominal insertion.
Liftoff!
Landing burn and soft splashdown of the booster!
Super impressive, especially given that the booster lost an engine early on, which must have eaten into the propellant budget.
Mission Control Audio: “R-vac prevalves are open.”
Looks like one booster engine is out. Max-Q occurred around the right time, though (T+1:01).
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 griffins started getting active and I got some bad flashbacks, but they reigned it in for a really impressive soft landing
Yeah, I was getting nervous when the booster was plummeting at mach 2 only 10 km up and that grid fin started oscillating, but the landing burn looked super smooth, even with one engine out.
Hot stage ring jettison!