SpaceX has a few tricks up its sleeve for the last Starship flight of the year

Summary

This graphic provided by SpaceX illustrates the flight paths of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage on Flight 11. Credit: SpaceX In an update posted Monday to its website, SpaceX did not mention the presence of any experimental metallic tiles on the next Starship flight. Engineers installed several metallic tiles on the ship that flew in August, but they "didn't work so well," SpaceX's Bill Gerstenmaier said in a presentation earlier this month. The ship still made an on-target splashdown in the Indian Ocean, but cameras recording the landing showed a broad area of orange discoloration on one side of the vehicle. This was due to oxidation of the metallic tiles in flight, according to Gerstenmaier. SpaceX added the metallic tiles to see if they might hold up better than the ceramic insulators. Engineers are refining the heat shield's design to make it robust against damage during reentry and landing. Any heat shield damage would require refurbishment, risking SpaceX's goal of making Starship fully and rapidly reusable. On a future flight, perhaps sometime next year, SpaceX will attempt to bring a Starship vehicle back to its launch site at Starbase, Texas, where it will slow down using its engines to settle into the grappling arms of the launch pad's servicing tower. One of the new test objectives for next month's Starship flight will be a "dynamic banking maneuver" during the final phase of the trajectory "to mimic the path a ship will take on future flights returning to Starbase," SpaceX said. This will help engineers test Starship's subsonic guidance algorithms. Another reuse While SpaceX is still a while from recovering and reusing Starship's upper stage, the company is preparing to take another step forward in reusing the rocket's massive Super Heavy booster. The next flight—Flight 11—will mark the second time SpaceX has reused a Super Heavy booster flown on a previous mission. This particular booster, numbered Booster 15, launched in March and was ...