SpaceX Skips Tower Catch On Flight 6 & Lands 232-Foot Tall Booster In Water Instead

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After successfully catching the first stage Super Heavy booster with the launch tower on Flight 5, SpaceX chose to skip the booster catch during Starship Flight 6 earlier today. The sixth integrated Starship test flight is still ongoing, and the rocket lifted off on time at 4 pm local time in Texas today. SpaceX had set ambitious goals for the booster’s catch today, with Elon Musk sharing before the flight that his firm would attempt a harder catch this time around. However, soon after the booster started its journey back to Earth, SpaceX’s teams confirmed on chats that it would be diverted to the ocean.

SpaceX Skips Tower Catch For Starship Flight 6 As Mission Fails To Meet All Commit Criteria

SpaceX’s commit criteria for the Super Heavy booster’s tower catch involves evaluating the tower and the booster at the time of stage separation and before the boost back burn to ensure that the rocket does not post a safety risk to either the launch tower or the surrounding areas. During today’s test, around the time that the first and second stage Starship rockets separated from each other, teams on call confirmd that the tower was go for a catch. This was confirmed by SpaceX’s presenter Dan Huot, who shared on the live stream that “we heard the tower is go for catch. The return flag is set for true.”

This was followed by the usual maneuvers that the Super Heavy booster undertakes before attempting a landing. During this time, the rocket first flew away from the second stage and then reignited its center core engines for the landing attempt. During this time, SpaceX evaluated the booster to determine whether it would be able to approach the tower and complete yet another tower catch.

After engine reignition, the rocket then shut down all engines to slowly guide and orient itself for a correct landing orientation. It was during this time that teams on SpaceX’s communications channels called out a “booster offshore divert” at the four-minute mark post launch. This indicated that while SpaceX’s launch tower was clear to catch the tower, it was the Super Heavy booster that made the firm uncertain to proceed with the highly risky maneuver of catching a 232-feet-tall rocket mid-air.

The call-out was before the landing burn, which lights up 13 Raptor engines and then pares down to three engines for the landing burn or the tower catch. Explaining the call out, SpaceX’s Kate Tice shared, “we did hear the call out, boost back, excuse me, booster offshore divert. Unfortunately that means we are no go for the catch. And as we said before, both the tower and vehicle as well as the operators on console have been actively evaluating the commit criteria for that return to the launch tower. And unfortunately, we did not have a pass on those commit criteria.”

Soon after the SpaceX presenters confirmed that the booster would not return to the launch tower, SpaceX successfully splashed it down on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The splashdown appeared smooth as the Super Heavy gently guided itself vertically to the water before splashing down and exploding in a fireball, but it floated mostly intact in the water and sat at an angle up.