It has been two weeks since SpaceX's last Starship test flight, and engineers have diagnosed issues with its heat shield, identified improvements, and developed a preliminary plan for the next time the ship heads into space.
Bill Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX executive in charge of build and flight reliability, presented the findings Monday at the American Astronautical Society's Glenn Space Technology Symposium in Cleveland.
The rocket lifted off on August 26 from SpaceX's launch pad in Starbase, Texas, just north of the US-Mexico border. It was the 10th full-scale test flight of SpaceX's Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, combining to form the world's largest rocket.
There were a couple of overarching objectives on the August 26 test flight. SpaceX needed to overcome problems with Starship's propulsion and propellant systems that plagued three previous test flights. Then, engineers were hungry for data on Starship's heat shield, an array of thousands of tiles covering the ship's belly as it streaks through the atmosphere during reentry.
"Things went extremely well," Gerstenmaier said.
A little more than an hour after liftoff, the Starship guided itself to a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. The ship came within 10 feet (3 meters) of its targeted splashdown point, near an inflatable buoy in position to record its final descent.
Video from the buoy and a drone hovering nearby showed Starship coming in for splashdown, initially falling belly first before lighting three of its six Raptor engines to flip upright moments before settling into the ocean. But the ship had some battle scars. There was some visible damage to its rear end and flaps, and most notably, a rusty orange hue emblazoned down the side of the 171-foot-tall (52-meter) vehicle.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the discoloration was caused by the oxidation of metallic head shield tiles installed to test their durability and performance in comparison to the ship's array of ceramic tiles. Unlike previous Starship flights, Musk said nearly all of the tiles remained on the vehicle from launch through landing.