FULL MISSION! SpaceX Starship Flight 12 Succeeds

Añadido: 2026-06-02

[00:00:05]- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 ignition.

[00:00:19]We have set you down range.

[00:00:41]booster operator chamber pressure nominal.

[00:00:48]All right, we are t plus 30 seconds into flight. See a 33 out of 33 Raptor 3 engines on booster V3 ascending over the Gulf now. Coming up on maximum aerodynamic pressure.

[00:01:03]>> Booster and ship. Avionics power telemetry nominal.

[00:01:08]>> Systems looking good. We're just passing through the period of maximum dynamic pressure.

[00:01:19]>> Little over a minute into flight now.

[00:01:22]Vibrations chilling out here at Star Factory as we continue to watch Starship flight 12 arc out over the Gulf. The next major thing coming up is going to be hot staging >> booster process.

[00:01:36]>> Reminder, we do what's our version of mo most engines cut off. So, we're going to shut down all but five of the Raptor engines on the booster.

[00:01:47]And then after that happens, we're going to ignite the six engines on ship while it is still attached.

[00:01:55]We have clamps that hold the two together. Those are going to retract inside of that hot stage ring. Kind of protect them.

[00:02:04]Look like we had one of the engines go out. Still flying on 32 of the Raptor engines. But again, once we get the hot staging, those six engines on the ship are going to ignite.

[00:02:17]We're going to do it in a little bit different of a of a of a sequence on version three. Essentially, those three Arvac engines will ignite first. Almost immediately after, just one of those central engines is going to ignite. And that's going to give the booster a bit of a kick, sending it in a known direction, followed shortly after by the other two.

[00:02:44]>> We're through Mo. separation.

[00:02:55]There you go. Successful hot staging separation.

[00:03:01]We are not seeing as many booster engines ignite as we expected for boost back, but we are seeing six good engines lit on ship.

[00:03:10]It looks like we just had an early boost back shutdown. Again, a reminder, the booster was planned to essentially head into the Gulf uh for a splashdown, but it has shut its engines down early on into boost.

[00:03:28]And we just see one of the Arvac. So, we're now running on five engines on ship.

[00:03:38]We do have engine out capability, so it's going to continue into its ascent.

[00:03:46]You got booster on the left there, ship on the right.

[00:03:51]>> Avionics power.

[00:03:52]>> We are not planning on bringing the booster back for this flight as this was the very first time.

[00:04:07]All right, so we're about 3 minutes 50 seconds into today's flight. Uh just a reminder, the the ship planned to burn its engines uh for about 8 minutes and change. Uh about 8 minutes and 11 seconds was our planned timeline for today. Uh that could shift slightly as we do have one engine out running on one fewer Arvac again continuing to watch. So booster did not complete its boost back burn. We would not see all of the engines ignite that we expected.

[00:04:46]Are continuing to get some views from it though. That's going to make a splash down somewhere in the in the Gulf.

[00:04:53]Reminder, we clear air, sea space, everything uh for these launches.

[00:05:10]All right. So, we are coming up on T + 5 minutes.

[00:05:17]Ship continuing to fire. Five of the six.

[00:05:25]Standing by for callouts. Making sure ship's on its planned trajectory. Again, we are planning a suborbital trajectory for the ship today.

[00:05:37]booster giving us some views as it continues to make its way back down towards the water.

[00:05:47]All right, so a little over five and a half minutes in flight. Kate, Jake, you guys with me? Looks like boosters starting to come in hot.

[00:05:55]>> Yeah, we had a the opportunity to stand outside to watch launch and wow that was incredible. Yeah, that was really loud, really shaky, and I was actually surprised how fast the booster got off the pad or the whole stack. That was that was quite incredible.

[00:06:10]>> Absolutely. So, we have views here from the booster coming back down, making its way into the Gulf.

[00:06:18]>> Pretty cool to see.

[00:06:19]>> Healthy chamber pressures on five out of six ship engines.

[00:06:22]>> Great news there for Starship.

[00:06:31]Once again, we were not going to bring the super heavy booster back to the tower. We were planning on having it land in the Gulf.

[00:06:43][applause] And it looks like the booster ended its mission there in the Gulf. But we've got a ship still flying. Great to see that.

[00:06:55]Still have five out of six engines there on S39.

[00:06:58]>> Yes, we also heard good chamber pressures as well on those engines that are lit. We do have engine out capability. We do see that we have one of the ARVAC, one of the Raptor vacuum engines that is currently out, but that's okay. Ship is continuing on.

[00:07:14]Amazing views of planet Earth there in the background.

[00:07:20]>> Yeah, I love the S39 decal there. That just gives the gives the ship a little bit of character. And again, all these great views brought to you by Starlink, of course.

[00:07:37]>> Yeah. Obligatory shout out to the entire Starship avionics, camera, electronics team. Did a whole lot of work to to get these upgraded cameras.

[00:07:48]A look inside of the ship skirt. You can see those three center engines ignited.

[00:07:52]The Arvac's continuing to fire as well.

[00:07:55]We did we did see at least a couple engines fire up on booster for that landing burn before we lost contact with it.

[00:08:03]We should have just a little over 20 seconds to go. We'll see if the burn extends a little bit uh for the engine out. Essentially, you can run your engines a little bit longer or throttle up a little bit more to account for the the one engine not being lit. So, right now, we are standing by for SECO.

[00:08:38]And again, we are continuing to go a little bit longer.

[00:08:51]Five engines still burning on ship.

[00:09:10]We are coming up on T + 9 minutes.

[00:09:28]And starting to see shut down.

[00:09:32]Arvacs have shut down. Sea levels are shut down.

[00:09:47]Seeing if we can get an update on the ship orbit insertion, but we have shut down again. We did run longer as we were engine out. We were flying with five of those six Raptors pretty much the whole time.

[00:10:03]Ship FTS is saved.

[00:10:11][cheering and applause] [cheering] All right. Well, we definitely got a ship in space right now.

[00:10:22][applause and cheering] >> [cheering] [applause] [cheering] >> As you can see, the teams are incredibly excited to see Starship there in space.

[00:10:47]We are awaiting the call out of nominal uh uh insertion. So, we're going to stand by for that. We can see the flaps uh moving here, actuating. But wow, the the cheers here in the lobby are certainly almost as loud as liftoff was.

[00:11:02]>> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah, man. Lot of action going on. And you know, we said at the top of the show, excitement guaranteed. And we're only 11 minutes in. We still have a lot more to go here on the mission today. So, uh, all objectives are done on the booster. So, now all eyes are on the ship as we get ready for our in space objectives.

[00:11:23]Exactly. So, like I said, we're still standing by to hear the call out for nominal orbital insertion, but we've got a few minutes uh before the next milestone. So, we're going to continue.

[00:11:34]We've got some amazing views here of the ship. Wow. It's just that this is our planet. This is our home.

[00:11:50]As a reminder, the objectives for ship today uh not only included the separation that we saw uh but we're also planning to deploy 20 uh Starlink simulator satellites as well as two Dodger dog satellites. It that's what our internal teams refer our to as our uh our newer satellites. Um we saw a preview of those earlier. We should see those deployments here in a little bit.

[00:12:18]We're also hoping to perform uh a relight of a Raptor engine as well.

[00:12:23]>> Yep, that's exactly right. And the relight will look a little bit different this time. We're hoping to get a little bit of a longer duration. Of course, we got to see once we get there. And uh that relight won't actually be changing our orbit necessarily, but we're doing it more so as a technology demonstration.

[00:12:56]For those of you that maybe just recently tuned in, you missed an a a a pretty exciting almost 13 minutes.

[00:13:03][laughter] Uh we had a liftoff uh pretty much on time almost right exactly at 5:30 p.m.

[00:13:10]We did have a brief hold at the t-minus 42nd period, but we were able to proceed through that and we saw a gorgeous liftoff. Uh Jake and I were able to stand outside and witness that with all of our colleagues and what a moment.

[00:13:24]I'll tell you what, it is a heck of a lot louder here than it was at Ad Astra.

[00:13:28][laughter] >> Absolutely. And um a couple things I noticed on the way uphill today on the ship. So uh obviously it looks like we lost one of the Arvacs on the way, but um that is a uh good way to demonstrate our potential engine out capability there. So and I think we actually saw the three gimbling engines kind of gimble over a little bit to compensate for that offset and thrust. So that was really cool. That's something I know the team's been uh we've analyzed that since flight one all the way back. So, um, it's something that we've thought about quite a bit and, uh, it was kind of cool to see it in action in in real life today.

[00:14:04]>> Yeah, absolutely.

[00:14:06]If you couldn't tell, Jake is on the Raptor team. [laughter] >> Yeah. But, one, uh, one non-rafteraptor thing I noticed also back on the uh, when we had the shot of the aft flaps.

[00:14:16]Uh, it's it's a little little weird. We have tiles on the leeward side. So, uh, not on the side where we're going to see heating. And you might be asking, why are we putting tiles there? I had the same question actually. Act actually. So I talked to some of our heat shield engineers the other day and we're actually running Yeah. Here's the shot right here. Great. So the fact that we're seeing all these tiles still on the flap right now is really good cuz that actually was one of our experiments where we wanted to test different connection methods uh on the way uphill on ship. So actually ascent. So it looks like most if not all the tiles are still hanging on there. So that's actually a really good data point. Looks pretty good to me. Now, once again, this view is from the side of Starship, which is uh basically the second stage of the Starship vehicle as a whole. This is one of the flaps on the vehicle that helps to control its position and attitude as it is orbiting and also helps to control during re-entry as well. That's a critical phase. Um, I mentioned earlier that we're hoping to deploy those Starlink satellite uh simulators as well as um perform an inspace relight of a Raptor engine. If all of that goes well, we will be targeting a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean. We heard from Seren on the recovery team a little bit earlier.

[00:15:37]They are standing by waiting uh to receive the ship that we see here.

[00:15:45]All right, let's send it upstairs. Dan, how's it looking?

[00:15:50]>> Hey guys, we are looking good. It does look like we are within bounds of what we analyzed if we were down one of our Arvac engines. So, I wouldn't call it nominal orbital insertion, but we're in an on a trajectory that we had analyzed and it's within bounds. So, uh team's continuing to work through it with that engine out. are working some through some steps on the engines. We probably will end up skipping the Raptor relight um for today, but it sounds like we should still be on for payload deploy at least at this time. So, very dynamic moments right here with the ship. Uh but we do have it in space. It is on a trajectory now headed towards the other side of the planet and then a splash down in the Indian Ocean.

[00:16:40]It's going to start to get darker. We're heading into an orbital sunset. Um, so we're going to we're going to have darkness for a little bit and then it'll brighten up once we're on the other side of the planet and hopefully looking at some uh some good daylight when we re-enter into the Indian Ocean.

[00:17:28]All right, so we're a little over 17 minutes into flight. If you're just now catching up with us, uh we did see a liftoff right at the top of our window.

[00:17:38]Uh Super Heavy getting off the pad, initially lighting all 33 of those Raptor engines. Got through a successful hot staging. initially lit six engines on ship. Had one RVAC go out on the way uphill, but still able to make it into space.

[00:17:53]And right now we're trying to see if we are going to get into payload deploy still.

[00:18:02]We're coming up right on the part of the timeline when we were expecting it. Look inside a Starship there. I see a door opening.

[00:18:12]Looks like Hal didn't wait. PEZ door is open. Just a reminder, we've got 22 deployables in the payload bay today. 20 of those Starlink mass simulators and then two are our dodger dogs, as we like to call them internally, uh sitting up their modified V2 Starlink satellites.

[00:18:35]Those are going to be testing a bunch of components that we're planning to fly on uh Starlink V3 and we've also got them outfitted with a number of cameras for another tech demo that we're trying out on this flight. We definitely are looking for a way that we can look at uh Starship's heat shield while it's still in space. You can kind of only see so much from the cameras and the flaps.

[00:19:01]can't see everything kind of on the underbelly and one of the only ways you can do that is if you got something else flying near it. So, uh we're going to attempt to uh our final two satellites going out the door have a suite of cameras on them that are going to be looking back at the ship. We're going to be in nighttime and so we've got sounds like we're getting into payload deploy. We'll be in nighttime. They've got some powerful uh flashlights on them to try and illuminate the ship's heat shield while we fly away from it. So, we see some PEZ motion.

[00:19:52][cheering] Pew, pew. [applause] [cheering] [cheering] Two down, 20 to go.

[00:20:20][applause and cheering] As a reminder, that's that's one of the things that we upgraded in version three. Kind of gave the a little soup up to the the PEZ dispensers. So, those satellites going to move out a little bit quicker than they did on previous uh Starship flight tests.

[00:20:42]So, first two out the door, two more on their way out.

[00:20:47][cheering] [applause] All >> [applause and cheering] [cheering] [applause] >> right, four down, 18 to go.

[00:21:08][cheering] Flexing my basic math skills here today.

[00:21:18]Again, the majority of the stack, 20 of these 22 satellites, they're essentially just mass simulators. So, they're roughly the same size as those Starlink V3 sats that we're hoping to fly later this year.

[00:21:36][cheering] [applause] [cheering] And from this top down view, so you're looking down at the stack, those two satellites you see on the very top that they'll look very different. They've got solar arrays. They've got a bunch of other deployables on them that we're going to be testing out that are going to be V3 tech. And they've got uh three engineering cameras and then one other camera that's hopefully going to be giving us some views of Starship in space.

[00:22:12]But we will we will see how that works.

[00:22:14]Again, this very much a tech demo. We're going to deploy those. The satellite's going to kind of try and turn everything on, look back at Starship. And the primary reason we're trying to do this is to get some views of the heat shield.

[00:22:29][cheering] [applause] All right, two more out the door.

[00:22:36]>> Two more out the door. And I think that counts or that comes up to eight total.

[00:22:46]>> As you can tell, the teams are stoked to see this demonstration happening. Uh it's it's pretty incredible to see this happening live from space. Now, as we noted earlier in the show, but worth repeating, this Starship version 3 is built to deploy up to 60 of Starlink's more advanced V3 satellites.

[00:23:07]Everything's V3 [laughter] designed to offer 60 terabs per second of down link capacity per satellite. Now that is 20 times more than each Falcon 9 does today. Incredible. [applause] All right, I think that's number 10 going out the door.

[00:23:28]Yeah, there it goes.

[00:23:34]So yeah, the camera view you have on your left screen there is basically right at the bottom of the payload volume. So the kind of dome-shaped uh structure you see there is that's actually the top of the fuel tank.

[00:23:51]Then the camera view that you have on the right is an external camera that we have positioned so that you can see basically the light through the open PEZ dispenser door um that you see that's that sliver of light and we can see the Starlinks uh here deploying as each one comes through. [applause and cheering] As we mentioned, we have 20 of these Starlink simulator satellites and then we have two of these specially modified um as we call them dodger dogs here around here. Uh those as Dan mentioned earlier, they have some V3 tech on them, some solar arrays and uh those will be the last two that will be deployed today.

[00:24:41]>> Yeah, that's right. And uh seeing this like as I think Dan called him turbocharged or supercharged uh PEZ dispenser. Uh it's definitely coming out much faster than our previous flights.

[00:24:53]So that is really good to see. Uh yeah, look at that.

[00:24:58][cheering] [applause] And especially once we, you know, fill Starship up all the way with around 60 or so of these Starlinks, being able to deploy them fairly expediently, uh, you know, is going to be important for designing the overall mission profile.

[00:25:16]>> Yeah.

[00:25:18]Now, fans of Starship may know that Starlink enables lots of unprecedented views both from space, as we see here, and on Earth. In addition to the dozens of cameras on Starship itself, we also have mobile Starlink camera kits deployed in the Indian Ocean.

[00:25:36]>> Yes, Starlink also connects our aerial cinematography units on the ground at Starbase and at other strategic camera spots around Texas.

[00:25:47]>> It's all part of how it all comes together [applause and cheering] to tell the incredible story of Starship both on and off planet.

[00:25:56]>> Yep.

[00:26:00]All right, we're we're getting low on the stack. It looks like we got two more of those simulators to go out and then it will be time for our Dodger dogs, those modified Starlink satellites.

[00:26:14]Just a couple of updates while we continue to watch payload deploy. did get confirmation we're going to be skipping that relight of the Raptor engine um just due to everything that we saw on the way uphill. Uh those sea level engines, we're going to use them for a landing burn though. They are still capable uh to be used for that.

[00:26:35]So, we'll still look to do a controlled landing in the Gulf, but no inspace relight.

[00:26:46]All right, I think that's 19 and 20 headed out the door.

[00:26:56]And then coming up are our Dodger dogs.

[00:26:58]So, these are modified V2 Starlink satellites. We do have a number of cameras on these that are going to attempt to look back at Starship. We're not going to get this video in real time, but we're going to try and turn it around if we do get some video down. So, we don't worry if we get views of Starship from these satellites, we will be sharing.

[00:27:27]And these these will be exciting because again, they're really a tech demo getting our chance to test out some of the the technologies for version three.

[00:27:37][applause and cheering] All right, I think that's 18 and 20. My basic math skills are failing now. All right, here we go.

[00:27:48][applause] We're standing by for Starship, basically to serve the first Dodger dogs to low Earth orbit.

[00:28:19][cheering] [applause] One out the door.

[00:28:27]>> [applause] >> And from this view, you can kind of see on the right side of the satellite, you see some bright white spots. Those are our flashlights beneath them. The camera is going to attempt to look back and image Starship's heat shield as it flies slowly away from the vehicle.

[00:28:45]And there it [cheering] goes.

[00:28:47][applause] [cheering] to let there be light.

[00:28:57]>> Yeah, it almost looks like the light is just shining right at us there.

[00:29:01][cheering] >> If you couldn't tell, we're pretty excited.

[00:29:09]>> Yeah, >> it is always sunny in space.

[00:29:13]>> Always sunny in space. And that looks like an empty payload bay. So, sure does.

[00:29:18]>> That's exactly what you want to see there. That's great.

[00:29:21]So yeah, [snorts] with payload deploy complete. Oh, you can see the door closing there. All right, there we go.

[00:29:28]So yeah, with payload deploy complete, Starship will now close this. [cheering] [applause] Yeah, Starship uh we closed the payload door and we're going to continue to coast around Earth all the way to the Indian Ocean. So still a lot of major events to come today. Sounds like we're not going to hit that Raptor relight um based on what Dan was saying. But after that, of course, we'll have the atmospheric re-entry and splashdown. And with that, we're going to go on another quick coast.

[00:30:00]>> So sit tight, enjoy some amazing space views and the space jams, of course. And we'll be back in a few minutes for Raptor relight. Excuse me, not for the relight, but we'll be standing by for uh atmospheric re-entry.

[00:30:15]Heat. Heat.

[00:30:41]>> [music] >> Heat.

[00:30:55]Hey, Heat.

[00:31:29]>> [music] >> Nat.

[00:32:21]Heat.

[00:32:47]>> [music] >> never.

[00:32:52]Hey, Hey, hey, hey.

[00:33:28]Everything.

[00:33:40]Heat. Heat. [music] You feel me?

[00:38:33]All right. So, surprise.

[00:38:37]Looks like our cameras did work. We've made contact with both of those satellites.

[00:38:42]We're going to roll that back again.

[00:38:47]Again, this is a view from from one of those satellites as we deployed. It looks like this was from the last one out. Flashlight turning on, taking a look at Starship in space.

[00:39:01]The way this system is set up is the satellites are essentially recording it, then making contact with our Starlink constellation, and then transferring that video back down to us on the ground.

[00:39:17]That's a Starship in space.

[00:39:22]So, aside from just being really cool, this was our test to try and develop a free flyer that we could fire outside of Starship's payload bay, look back at it, and then do essentially a powette with Starship to get a look at the heat shield where it's going to be really important when we start bringing these things back for a catch, uh, which we are hopefully doing in the not too distant future, um, as they are intended to be fully reusable. Uh, but this will give us an opportunity to look at the heat shield while Starship is still in space. So, there was a glimpse. We'll see if we get any more video down from those satellites. But, I mean, that's that's one we've been chasing for a while. So, really cool to see it come to fruition here on flight 12.

[00:40:11]All right, coming up on 40 minutes 40 minutes into the flight and we should start hitting the re-entry period uh in the next 7 minutes or so. You'll start to see a light show building up. Uh as we had talked about, we did skip that on orbit relight of the Raptor engine. It was not needed uh for our trajectory or anything. We are on this suborbital trajectory to splash down in the Indian Ocean. We are we are going to attempt a landing burn. Uh we'll see how they perform when we get there. And just a reminder, we're going to be we are going to be stressing the ship on the way in.

[00:40:54]We're going to intentionally do a maneuver where we're going to kind of pitch the nose up and deploy those aft those bottom flaps uh to really put a lot of pressure on them. So, we'll see how it does through that maneuver and then we'll be doing kind of a final banking turn before we get to a landing burn. So, all that coming up in a few minutes. The light show should start beginning real soon.

[00:42:49]>> [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:43:21][music] Heat.

[00:43:34]Heat.

[00:43:36][music] >> [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:44:28]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:44:42]Heat. Heat. N.

[00:45:36]Heat. Heat.

[00:46:53]Heat. Heat. N.

[00:48:35]Welcome back to Starship Flight 12, the first test flight of Starship version 3.

[00:48:42]As Dan mentioned earlier, we were able to make contact with the modified satellites just shortly after deployment. And as you may have seen, we got some sweet views of those sats looking back at the ship. Pretty cool to see.

[00:48:55]>> Yeah, those views were incredible.

[00:48:58]>> Now, as you see on your screen, currently the ship is re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. This is the plasma starting to build up on the exterior of the vehicle. Now, we do not plan to recover the spacecraft today, but rapid and reliable reusability is the ultimate goal.

[00:49:12]>> Yeah, that's right. And re-entry is a critical phase of flight, and we need information on how the ship systems perform. Re-entry is an extremely demanding portion of flight where we essentially have to scrub all of the energy we use to launch the rocket back off in reverse. So the 18 million pounds of thrust that we had off 33 of those Raptor engines, >> just a little, >> just a little, [laughter] we're now and then another, you know, several minute burn on the ship, we're now basically undoing all that energy here, uh, via aerodynamic braking essentially.

[00:49:48]And of course, Starlink is a big part of it as that's what allows us to actually gather this data and show these live views.

[00:49:59]And again, the data gathering is really the main reason why we're doing these flight tests. So, Starlink provides us just one more path to collect that data that ultimately allows us to rapidly iterate Starship's design. Now, if ship manages to make it all the way through re-entry, we'll collect valuable data on the spacecraft flying through the Earth's atmosphere at these hypersonic speeds, uh, which is basically more than five times the speed of sound. Now, we do anticipate that it might be a little bit of a spicy re-entry. So, we'll see how far we get. Re-entry is typically a portion of flight where we don't have communications with the spacecraft because it's re-entering at or around orbital velocity roughly 8 km/s uh or for those of us that think in other units roughly 5 miles per second.

[00:50:49]At those speeds, the spacecraft is moving through the atmosphere and it creates that plasma field that we saw uh forming around the vehicle.

[00:50:56]>> Yeah. And although the plasma looks really cool, uh it does distort some communication frequencies. So, it's not uncommon to experience brief blackouts in communication.

[00:51:12]Of course, thinking long term here, Starship is designed to land on Mars where there are no runways or other humans to help out. That's why we're going with the propulsive landing instead of a more traditional means like parachutes.

[00:51:27]Propulsive landing, not only again is it more cool, but it enables a rapid uh a more rapidly reusable uh rocket.

[00:51:35]>> Yeah. Now, we should hear some call outs as the ship makes its way back to Earth.

[00:51:41]When we hear entry max heating and entry max Q, that means the ship has made it through the maximum heating and aerodynamic loads that it will experience as it's as it returns. So, if we make it through those, we're doing pretty well.

[00:51:55]>> Yeah.

[00:51:57]And you can see in the bottom left right now, we're at 23 and a half,000 kilometers per hour uh speed. That's just crazy number to think about. Um but as we keep progressing the mission we are going to hear a call out when the ship is transsonic and then subsonic.

[00:52:18]So transsonic refere ref refers to the period of flight where the velocities of air flow surrounding and flowing past the vehicle are concurrently below at and above the speed of sound kind of in that Mach 0.8 to 1.2 range. And for reference, commercial jets have a range of cruising speeds, but mostly fly around Mach 74 to Mach.85.

[00:52:46]And after we hear the call out that Starship is transsonic, we should hear the call out when Starship is subsonic.

[00:52:54]This refers to speeds that are much less than the speed of sound. So at this point in the flight, ship's velocity will be slowing down.

[00:53:05]Well, we definitely have a crowd still here in the lobby of uh SpaceX headquarters down here at Starbase, Texas. Everyone is, you know, loves watching ship re-entry. It's always such amazing colors. It This must be what it feels like to be one of those uh praying mantis shrimp or mantis shrimp. I'm not can't [laughter] remember exactly what the name is, but the ones that see in billions of colors. This is the closest I feel to being one of those.

[00:53:34]>> Yep. Yep. I think one other thing that's cool to point out right now is uh look in the bottom right. You can see where we are on a globe there. We're squarely in the Indian Ocean already and >> we've only been flying for 53 minutes.

[00:53:50]So, pretty crazy. We went all the way from Texas to the Indian Ocean in less than an hour.

[00:53:55]>> Yeah, she flies pretty fast.

[00:53:56]>> She flies very fast.

[00:54:12]All right. So, the light show continuing. We are through the period of peak heating and we'll be looking at the peak pressure coming up in the next couple of minutes. The next 10 minutes are probably going to be the spiciest of entry today. As a reminder, we are going to be doing uh some stress work on this ship where we're going to do a maneuver where we kind of uh kick the nose up to fully deploy those a flaps uh to really get a a good test of the structural strength of that part of the ship. We did that on one previous flight test on version two. We're going to try and do that today. Uh since we did skip the inspace burn, we're carrying a little bit of extra propellant in our header tanks up in the nose and so that's going to put a little bit of extra stress on those forward flaps as we come in. So we will see if they're able to hold through through that re-entry. Um so that will be another watch item. We did skip that in space burn. Uh but we are expecting at least two of those sea level engines to try and ignite for a landing burn. Um we entered the entry period in a good attitude. Um so hopefully making our way to the targeted splashdown point. We've got that Starship recovery team standing by and we should be about 10 minutes away from splashdown. So lot of excitement over the next couple of minutes. Kate and Jake, let's see how Starship holds up on the way in.

[00:55:47]>> Yeah, and we just heard on the nets there that engine chill has started. So, essentially what that means is we are prepping the landing engines by getting them down to temperature ahead of that landing burn later in the mission here.

[00:56:06]And on a lot of our previous flight tests, we've been removing a bunch of the tiles. If you've watched those, we were really intentionally trying to push ship beyond its limits. Uh on the last flight, we even had uh basically a hole get punched into the liquid oxygen tank that you could see when we did the landing burn into the ocean, and this ship was still able to make it. Uh but right now we're we're really going to be testing the structural strength of these flaps on the way in. Again, we're this is a flight test. We're trying to intentionally find where our limits are.

[00:56:41]And in this view, you're looking at a whole bunch of tiles. I think Jake talked about it earlier. We bonded some additional tiles to uh the the leeward or kind of the metal side of Starship to see how those different bonding techniques would hold up. And looking like we've got quite a bit still attached.

[00:57:02]Yeah. And as we're going down through the atmosphere here, we are at about Mach 16.1.

[00:57:11]So, still extremely fast. Uh although we have, you know, scrubbed off a sub uh substantial amount of our speed already.

[00:57:20]Altitude at a little less than 60 kilometers.

[00:57:39]All right, we're about 8 minutes away from our targeted landing and splashdown time. Again, this is when the ship's going to start really >> ship is approaching the end of the peak heating region.

[00:57:53]>> Just heard the call out. getting to the end of the peak heating. So, the the highest temperature sh the starship's going to see during its re-entry.

[00:58:18]This camera angle changes as it is attached to the forward flap on Starship. So, we're actually experiencing the articulation of that hardware helping to steer the ship down for its precise landing in the Indian Ocean.

[00:58:37]>> Yep. That is just a really cool uh kind of cool piece of perspective there. I know some people say it makes them a little seasick, but I definitely love it. makes it feel like you're, you know, you're really riding along with the ship on the way down.

[00:58:53]>> Yeah. And aside from just looking cool, all these camera views providing just really critical data on how the heat shield, how the flaps themselves are holding up. It's why we've got these in the flaps and then all scattered all around the ship so you can see how they hold up. There's some internal to the vehicle too that and we're getting all of this video back via Starlink even as we're just enshrouded in plasma. We're able to kind of operate at a high enough frequency to punch through. And that is blue ocean and sunlight you're seeing just beyond the flap. So, we are coming down into daylight hopefully splashing down in the next six minutes or so in the in the Indian Ocean. Uh we've we've still got a couple of maneuvers lined up where we're going to be really stressing the flaps on the ship. So >> ship has passed through the peak heating region. External temperatures are coming down.

[00:59:48]>> Wow, that is incredible news. As Dan mentioned, we were expecting this re-entry to be super spicy. Uh but excellent news that we're now past that period of peak heating and that now the external temperatures are starting to decrease.

[01:00:06]those heat shield tiles there on the belly of the ship really doing a ton of work to burn off all of that inertia that the vehicle had uh prior to re-entering the atmosphere.

[01:00:23]>> Yeah. And you can tell by the Gmemeter down on the bottom right that we're starting to pick up a couple more G's here. So, we're definitely entering the thicker part of the atmosphere where we're scrubbing off all that energy like Kate's saying.

[01:00:42]>> All right, just about five minutes or so to go. We're coming up shortly on the the maneuver where we're going to it's affectionately called the the flap slap where we're going to kind of pitch the nose up on the ship and you're going to see those a flaps the ones in the very bottom fully deploy.

[01:01:04]Ship is at peak dynamic pressure >> and we're now at peak pressure.

[01:01:14]Ship flap load test has started.

[01:01:35]Looks like it's holding.

[01:01:41]>> Again, the intent of that was to put just a lot of extra stress on those a flaps. We are expecting the forward ones too to see a little bit of extra stress as we've got a little more propellant in our header tank. So the area right at the very nose of >> test is complete >> and we're through that test.

[01:02:02]>> There we go. And we just did that test at Mach 7 just for reference there. So we are still going incredibly fast.

[01:02:17]All right, we are just about three and a half minutes or so away from our targeted landing burn. Again, we're expecting to try and see two of these Raptor engines light for the landing burn. Normally, we plan for three, but we're going to give it a try with two.

[01:02:37]>> Hopefully, we've got >> starting the RTLS banking maneuver.

[01:02:45]>> And that right there. So, we're starting a a banking maneuver. And essentially what that is is when we come back to Starbase or when we plan to come back to Starbase, the trajectory is designed so we'll essentially swing out over the Gulf and do a swoop maneuver to then come back to the towers for catch. And so we are doing that exact same maneuver as we head towards our targeted splash down in the Indian Ocean.

[01:03:17]>> Yeah. And that call out there that we heard uh RTLS stands for return to launch site. So definitely a pretty cool thing we're demoing here on the ship, you know, as in the future we are going to be trying to bring the ship back to the launch site, which is going to be absolutely insane.

[01:03:34]>> Absolutely. But of course, we want to test out these maneuvers, these principles prior to actually bringing the hardware back to the pad. This is the same reason why we were um you know intentionally not trying to bring the booster back to the pad. So we're trying all these things out in this developmental phase of the vehicle uh and you know really proving what a test flight is.

[01:03:58]>> Absolutely.

[01:03:58]>> Dynamic pressure is coming down.

[01:04:01]>> All right. We heard there dynamic pressure coming down and I'd say we're in a pretty good bank right now.

[01:04:08]>> Yeah. Executing the power slide. We're about 90 seconds away from our anticipated landing burn. Clouds coming up. Pretty sunrise on the other side of the planet.

[01:04:22]Starship is subsonic and is on target.

[01:04:27][applause and cheering] The crowd here reacting to that call out, letting us know that we are on target for this precise landing in the Indian Ocean. This will once again be a soft splashdown.

[01:04:43]We should get some pretty cool views from the recovery team who we chatted with earlier. They are standing by to receive this ship. Once again, this is the first flight of our completely redesigned Starship version three.

[01:04:57]Yeah. And if you remember the suborbital flights from a few years ago, this is very much the same regime that we're in here. So, we're sub 15 kilometers executing what we call the belly flip maneuver.

[01:05:10]Ah, yes. Serial number eight, the first belly flop. I remember it well.

[01:05:24]Just some really amazing views of the Earth as the ship is coming back home.

[01:05:32]Thanks, Starlink.

[01:05:42]>> Yeah, you can see the aft flap there making minor corrections.

[01:05:46]>> Starship is turning for final approach to landing site. Look at that turn.

[01:05:50]>> There we go. Minor corrections and a full turn.

[01:05:56]>> Yeah, Starship doesn't fly like an airplane. It's a lot more like a sky diver.

[01:06:01]Full belly flop on the way down. Using those flaps similar to arms to help change the the the path of the air over you. Coming up real soon. Again, going for a landing burn. Trying to light two of these Raptor sea level engines.

[01:06:22]Landing burn startup.

[01:06:24]>> Landing burn start up.

[01:06:27]>> Two engine flip.

[01:06:34]Successful flip.

[01:06:38][cheering] Good shot. [cheering and applause] Oh, [cheering] [cheering] amazing.

[01:07:05][cheering] That glow of fire is exactly what we wanted to [cheering] see for the ship today. As weird as it may sound to to to hear, but it is the truth.