SpaceX
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon heat shield shown off after first orbital-velocity reentry
Following SpaceX’s successful debut launch, rendezvous, and recovery of Crew Dragon, NASA has published official photos documenting the scorched spacecraft’s Atlantic Ocean splashdown, GO Searcher’s recovery, and the duo’s return to Port Canaveral shortly thereafter.
Aside from offering a number of spectacularly detailed views of Crew Dragon after its inaugural orbital reentry, NASA’s photos also provide an exceptionally rare glimpse of the spacecraft’s PICA-X v3 heat shield, revealing a tiled layout that is quite a bit different from Cargo Dragon’s own shield. A step further, CEO Elon Musk offered updates on March 17th about progress being made towards a new, metallic heat shield technology meant to make ablative shields like those on Dragon outdated, serving as a striking bit of contrast to SpaceX’s newest spacecraft, potentially just a dozen or two months away from already becoming anachronistic.
Generally speaking, the basic appearance of Crew Dragon – compared alongside Cargo Dragon, ‘Dragon 1’ – after its first orbital reentry immediately suggests that one or several things about the new capsule and its reentry experience are quite a bit different from the Dragon reentries now familiar. Relative to Cargo Dragon, Crew Dragon appears to either have significantly different thermal protection along its leeward (downwind) section or experienced significantly a different thermal profile over the course of the handful of minutes spent in the period of peak heating.
For the most part, both Dragon variants actually appear to be in similar condition, with most of the variance between capsules likely explained by their distinct aeroshells, particularly the four sloped protuberances enclosing Crew Dragon’s SuperDraco thruster pods. As a result of those pods, the hypersonic airstream and plasma tail of Crew Dragon likely ends up being quite a bit less stable, causing the somewhat haphazard patterns and streaks relative to Cargo Dragon’s more delineated leeward and windward characteristics. In fact, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk noted prior to launch that his only real concern or uncertainty centered around those new aerodynamic characteristics and the subsequent slight risk of instability during reentry.
Aside from Crew Dragon’s thruster pods and moderately different toast pattern, the next-generation spacecraft also features an intact and still-installed nosecone, a significant departure from Cargo Dragon’s own shroud, detached and permanently expended prior to reaching orbit. In the likely event that Crew Dragon’s reusable nosecone and associated waterproofing worked as intended, the myriad hardware situated beneath it – ranging from LIDAR and Draco thrusters to its relatively intricate international docking adapter (IDA) – should have been protected from both the violence of reentry and exposure to saltwater upon splashdown.
Meanwhile, the patterns on the more windward half of Crew Dragon indicate that Musk’s mild but open concerns with potential instability during reentry were predominately unwarranted, displaying scorch marks that suggest the spacecraft maintained its orientation quite successfully over six or so minutes of peak heating and buffeting. Much like almost every other aspect of Crew Dragon’s inaugural trip to orbit and back, the spacecraft performed its duties to a level of perfection so surreal that the SpaceX employees operating the craft – i.e. “on-console” – at points felt like it was too good to be true, searching for and anxiously awaiting anomalies that would have been par for the course of any spacecraft’s launch debut, let alone a system as complex as this one.
Despite their reasonable expectations of at least some sort of moderate to
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SpaceX and its CEO Elon Musk are starting to shed some light on the potential reasoning for the loss of Starship yesterday, which was lost after a successful launch and catch of the lower-stage booster.
Starship was lost during its ascension, and debris rained down over the Caribbean less than an hour after SpaceX lost all communication with the spacecraft.
A few hours after the launch was over, SpaceX started to shed some light after looking at preliminary data that the rocket left behind.
The company said that a fire developed in the aft section of Starship:
“Following stage separation, the Starship upper stage successfully lit all six Raptor engines and performed its ascent burn to space. Prior to the burn’s completion, telemetry was lost with the vehicle after approximately eight and a half minutes of flight. Initial data indicates a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly with debris falling into the Atlantic Ocean within the predefined hazard areas.”
Additionally, Musk said that there was some sort of oxygen or fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall.
The leak was evidently large enough to build more pressure than the vent was able to handle:
🚨Elon Musk has also said an oxygen or fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall could be the cause of the anomaly. https://t.co/BgLkdA9Kk1
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 17, 2025
Some also seemed to recognize evidence of fires throughout the flight of Starship, which is obviously an anomaly:
Unconfirmed but what looks to be fire at the hinge of Starship’s flap. A potential RUD? We await as we get any confirmation from SpaceX.
They do not have comms with the spacecraft as this moment. pic.twitter.com/Cn1EF4AHpv
— Mihir Tripathy (@mihirneal) January 16, 2025
There will be more information regarding the loss of Starship in the coming days and weeks, but Musk already believes that a bit of fire suppression and more volume in the cavity above the ship engine firewall could fix the issue.
“Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month,” he said, so Flight 8 could happen sometime in February.
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SpaceX completed its seventh launch of Starship on Thursday, accomplishing a clean liftoff and catch of the first-stage booster. However, the upper stage was lost after its ascent.
The launch took place just a few minutes after 5 p.m. on the East Coast, as the first attempts at getting Starship in the air for the seventh time were delayed by weather both last week and this week.
Conditions were favorable on Thursday as SpaceX looked to follow up a successful campaign by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s company, earlier today.
SpaceX went into the seventh Starship launch with plans for a catch attempt of the first-stage booster, something it attempted and completed during the fifth test launch last year. It decided to skip a catch attempt with the sixth test flight as conditions were not aligned.
For now, SpaceX is extremely selective as to when it attempts catches.
However, it was successful during this attempt, its second completed catch:
🚨 🚀 Here is @SpaceX’s full catch of the Lower Stage Booster from Starship Flight 7! pic.twitter.com/IXIRAGr1Md
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 16, 2025
This flight differed from previous launches as SpaceX rolled out several improvements to the rocket and the processes as it featured plans to do a Starlink deployment simulation and had various adjustments to flap placement and avionics.
These plans were disrupted by the fact that SpaceX lost all communications with Starship about ten minutes into the flight, which the aerospace company confirmed was a result of losing the spacecraft sometime during its ascent.
🚀🚨 Telemetry on Starship has been lost. All comms with the ship have been lost, and SpaceX’s livestream says this is an “anomaly.”
“We are assuming the ship has been lost.” pic.twitter.com/fyyCNuXVRg
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 16, 2025
Although the catch was successful, the loss of the actual rocket seemed to be a huge damper on the entire event. SpaceX confirmed several minutes after the loss of communications that the rocket was destroyed and was lost.
It was its first failure since the second Starship launch in November 2023. SpaceX had no answers for why the rocket was destroyed and lost.
We will keep you updated in the coming days.
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SpaceX has confirmed a new target date for the seventh Starship test launch after weather in Texas delayed the first scheduled date for “three or four days.”
The company is now targeting the launch for Monday, January 13, at 4 p.m. CST or 5 p.m. EST. The launch date is not set in stone as any variety of delays could impact this, but SpaceX hopes to finally take off after a delay that pushed it back from January 10.
🚨 STARSHIP LAUNCH DATE: @SpaceX says Starship’s 7th test flight is now targeted for Monday, January 13 at 4pm CST
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 8, 2025
What’s new with this Starship launch
With this being the seventh test launch of Starship, there are several things that the company will change and hope to accomplish. All of these launches are done in preparation for eventually taking flight to Mars, something that will happen next year, according to CEO Elon Musk.
First, SpaceX is rolling out a next-generation ship with “significant upgrades.” Forward flaps have been made smaller and are repositioned away from the heat shield, which will “reduce their exposure to reentry heating.”
There is also a 25 percent increase in propellant volume, a new fuel feedline system for the Raptor vacuum engines, and a better-than-ever propulsion avionics module that will control the valves and reading sensors.
Avionics, as a whole, underwent a redesign and now have more capability and redundancy for missions as they become more complex.
Starlink test
SpaceX is also planning to deploy 10 Starlink simulators that are similar in size and weight to the next-generation Starlink satellites:
“While in space, Starship will deploy 10 Starlink simulators, similar in size and weight to next-generation Starlink satellites as the first exercise of a satellite deploy mission. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship, with splashdown targeted in the Indian Ocean. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned.”
Ship return and catch
There will be several experiments that have to do with returning Starship and various catch scenarios and sequences. One of which will see “a significant number of tiles be removed to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle.”
The ship’s reentry profile was also intentionally designed to test the structural limits of the flaps while at the point of maximum dynamic pressure during reentry.
Currently, SpaceX did not detail whether it would attempt another catch during this test launch. These are usually game-time decisions.
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