SpaceX’s Starship Flight 6 Booster Spotted Floating In Water Close Up From Ship At Night

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SpaceX’s Starship Super Heavy booster that flew on Flight 6 failed to sink to the bottom of the ocean, shows fresh footage on X. While SpaceX had originally planned to catch the booster with the tower, the firm aborted the attempt at the last moment. It chose to land the rocket in the ocean instead softly, and Elon Musk later revealed that the reason behind the abort was a problem with the launch tower. Now, fresh footage shows the 232-feet-tall Super Heavy gently floating on the water as teams approach it with a ship.

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According to an image from Elon Musk, SpaceX’s Starship Flight 4 booster was the first it had recovered from the water. This rocket landed in the ocean and was the first to complete a soft splashdown in the water. Over the course of Starship’s full stack tests, SpaceX has progressively improved its performance as while the booster used in Flight 3 did attempt a splashdown, troubles with its engines destroyed above the ocean’s surface.

Musk’s image showed most of Super Heavy’s outer ring of engines intact while the inner ring and the body were absent. Starship Flight 5 was the first test with a successful tower catch of the Super Heavy booster which also made it the first rocket that SpaceX recovered fully intact.

With Flight 6, while SpaceX failed to catch the rocket with the tower, it did softly splash it in the ocean. The firm’s live stream showed the rocket partially submerged in the water after splashdown, and now, it appears that the Super Heavy might have failed to sink to the bottom of the Texas Gulf.

Footage from X shows the Super Heavy booster gently floating on the water at night. After SpaceX decided to abort the tower catch on Flight 6 and landed the booster in the water, footage from the firm’s live stream showed the rocket floating on the water at an upward angle. This was despite a cloud of flames surrounding it after the landing, but unlike boosters from the previous flights, the rocket remained intact this time.

A rocket’s tanks are filled with inert pressurized gas once their propellants are depleted. This ensures structural integrity during flight; otherwise, the tanks will collapse inwards, leading to a launch anomaly. These tanks appear to have contributed to the Super Heavy booster’s buoyancy post-flight, and as of now, it’s uncertain whether SpaceX recovered the rocket or let it sink to the bottom of the water. Footage from local media channel LabPadre Space showed the rocket heading “South into Mexican waters, still guarded by support aircraft” after its splashdown on the day of Flight 6.

True to form, SpaceX is already shipping out components of its Super Heavy boosters for future Starship flights. The firm rolled out a section of yet another booster for a future Starship flight yesterday as it gradually aims to increase Starship launch cadence from Texas and utilize both launch towers.

Imagine being a pirate and seeing this, my god pic.twitter.com/YSEHiQE1az

— Austin Barnard🚀 (@austinbarnard45) November 23, 2024