SpaceX launch live: Starship Flight 6 watching guide as Elon Musk tries to land rocket with ‘chopsticks’ – UK Times

We have lift off for Starship Flight 6!

With just 10 minutes to go until launch, there’s already more than 1.5 million people watching the live stream.

It should be a similar sight to Starship Flight 5 last month, though SpaceX has warned that it will be pushing the craft to its limit in order to intentionally discover any potential issues with the rocket.

“We’d much rather find the bugs and limits now during testing [rather] than later when there’s more on the line,” says SpaceX’s commentator.

We’re getting the first images of SpaceX boss Elon Musk welcoming President-elect Donald Trump to watch today’s launch.

It is not the first SpaceX launch that Trump has attended, having previously watched the firm’s first crewed flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida, during his first presidential term.

The pair weren’t so close as they are now, with Musk hoping that his strong support for Trump during his campaign will translate into favourable regulation and government funding for his Mars ambitions.

Elon Musk has previously spoken of his ambition to build a fleet of hundreds of Starships every year in order to ferry thousands of people throughout the solar system.

SpaceX has just revealed that it is currently in the process of hiring engineers to meet its goal of building a new Starship rocket “every eight hours”. This is an unprecedented task, with each rocket measuring 121 metres.

It is the biggest rocket ever built – here’s how Starship stacks up against other massive rockets.

SpaceX has just confirmed that propellent load of Starship’s Super Heavy booster is underway.

It’s T-minus 30 minutes until launch.

A man has been arrested for allegedly trespassing on SpaceX property, according to local media reports.

The 40-year-old man managed to bypass security measures to enter SpaceX’s facilities in Brownsville, Texas, but was detained after security officers alerted police.

The incident won’t have any impact on today’s launch attempt.

SpaceX’s sixth Starship flight test is only an hour and a half away – so what are we going to see?

Objectives include the Super Heavy booster returning to the launch site for a “chopsticks” catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean.

Starship’s upper stage will fly the same suborbital trajectory as the previous flight test, with splashdown targeted in the Indian Ocean.

Here’s a diagram of what it should look like:

As the head of SpaceX, Elon Musk is not only launching more rockets than most other countries combined, he also now controls two thirds of all active satellites orbiting Earth. (It’s been a while since I updated this chart, but gives you an idea of his influence.)

All this power in the hands of the world’s richest person has led to increasing concerns from astronomers and advocacy groups. Through SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, he has the ability to skirt internet bans – like the one imposed on his other company X in Brazil earlier this year – and even impact the outcome of wars through its use by militaries fighting in Ukraine.

“There are concerns, especially when it comes to national sovereignty,” Paula Bernardi, a Sao Paolo-based internet policy adviser, told me in September. “It is concerning, for example, that one person could make the decision to take down the service for hundreds of thousands of people.”

You can read more about how Musk is taking over space here:

Today’s launch will be 119th rocket that SpaceX has sent to space this year, marking a new record for the private space firm.

It is more than 20 more than the previous record of 96 set last year – and there’s still more than a month left to go of 2024 for SpaceX to push the record even further.

The vast majority of launches have been reused Falcon 9 rockets, proving how vital it is for SpaceX to perfect the landing of Starship today and make it another reusable workhorse for the company. Elon Musk hopes to build a fleet of hundreds of Starships, with multiple launches and landings a day in his mission to colonise Mars.