- 4 months ago
Watch the plasma build up around SpaceX's flight 10 Starship during its atmospheric re-entry and see it splash down in the Indian Ocean on Aug. 26, 2025 to complete a successful test.
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00:01But if we do make it all the way down to the water, who knows?
00:04But the goal of this part of the flight is to learn as much as we can about the ship's heat shield.
00:11A fully reusable, rapidly reusable heat shield for a spacecraft has never been done before.
00:18It's one of the hardest engineering challenges still out there for us.
00:22And so this is a time to really dig in and get that data.
00:25Yeah, absolutely.
00:26And re-entry is a critical phase of flight.
00:28So we'll need information on how the ship's system ended up performing.
00:33And Starlink will also help us gather as much data as possible, which is really the main reason why we do these flight tests.
00:40Starlink provides us with one more path to collect data to help us rapidly iterate on Starship's design.
00:46And if the ship manages to make it all the way to re-entry, we'll collect valuable data on the spacecraft flying through the Earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds or more than five times the speed of sound.
00:57Yeah, throughout history, a lot of times this is when you go into just a complete data and insight blackout, where that plasma sheath builds up around the outside of the spacecraft that blocks all of your signals that are trying to fight through to talk to either satellites out in space or towers down on the ground.
01:18Starship's big size kind of gives us a wake, but what really helps us punch through is the fact that we're using Starlink.
01:25We're operating at just a much higher frequency.
01:28That's not what we want to see.
01:30So we started, we just saw some of the aft skirt just take a hit.
01:35So we've got some visible damage on the aft skirt.
01:40We'll continue to re-enter though.
01:42And again, we are intentionally stressing the ship as we go through this.
01:48So it is not guaranteed to be a smooth ride down to the Indian Ocean.
01:54We've removed a bunch of tiles in kind of critical places across the vehicle.
01:59So seeing stuff like that is still valuable to us.
02:03We are trying to kind of push this vehicle to the limits to learn what its limits are as we design our next version of Starship.
02:12So 47 minutes, 45 seconds into the flight.
02:16Excitement ticking up a little bit on re-entry already, but the light show is continuing.
02:22This re-entry is going to take about 20 minutes or so until our plans flash down.
02:29We were trying to splash down about one hour and six minutes into the flight.
02:37Yeah.
02:38And one day Starship is designed to land on Mars where there are obviously no runways or other humans to help us out.
02:44So we are doing propulsive landing instead of more traditional means such as parachutes.
02:49And propulsive landing enables us to have more rapid reusability with these vehicles.
02:53Yeah, the ship itself, it's a little over 50 meters tall.
03:00We've got those six engines on board, the three vacuum, the three sea level, and they're down in that abscurt region.
03:08Flaps have control.
03:09All right, so at this point, the flaps have control.
03:15That means we're getting into a dense enough part of the atmosphere that the flaps can start controlling us.
03:20We're not only reliant on those kind of reaction control system thrusters.
03:26We're going to continue hearing some call-outs as the ship makes its way back to Earth.
03:30So when we hear entry max heating and entry max queue, that will mean the ship has made it through the maximum heating and aerodynamic loads it will experience as it returns.
03:40So if it makes it through those, we can say we're doing pretty well.
03:44I will say I'm happy re-entry cleaned off this camera for us.
03:48It was a little dirty from the weather.
03:50So thank you, Plasma, for giving us this view as we start coming down.
04:00The hit we saw to the skirt, definitely interesting.
04:05I will note, when we started doing these missing tile tests, we were intentionally removing them only in the skirt.
04:14That's not over your fuel tanks or anything else that's kind of structurally critical for keeping the entire vehicle together that obviously exposes your engines.
04:23So that could do some things for our landing burn.
04:26But for now, we are obviously continuing with this re-entry.
04:30We are committed.
04:31Indian Ocean, here we come.
04:3350 minutes since launch.
04:35We're going to see those colors start to build up a little bit.
04:39We are at the point where we're in dense enough atmosphere that the flaps have control.
04:49So about 74 kilometers in altitude.
04:51And you were starting to see some sunlight, so we intentionally timed these launches right now so we have daylight.
05:01The sun should actually come up over the horizon on Starship in about three minutes.
05:05So as we get a little bit further into this re-entry, that inky black below you is going to start to look like clouds and hopefully a bright blue ocean as we make our way down onto the other side of the planet.
05:21So we've got these cameras.
05:26These cameras are really cool.
05:27We added these several flights ago looking directly at the flaps as not just the heat shield, but these flaps, how they're able to control the vehicle, withstand that re-entry.
05:39The seal locations, so kind of where they connect to the ship itself are some of the most critical.
05:46We will do missing tiles on those where, again, we're trying to – we're kind of being mean to this Starship a little bit.
05:54We're really trying to put it through the paces and kind of poke on what some of its weak points are.
05:59I mean, we even have missing tiles over some of those fuel tank sections of the ship itself, and so we're really trying to see what are our limits.
06:10We're doing this over a completely empty area over the Earth.
06:20Look at our raptors there.
06:21We are – assuming we make it all the way down to the ocean in one piece, we will attempt a flip and a landing burn.
06:27We do have at least one buoy, everybody's favorite camera person, out in the Indian Ocean right now, being powered by Starlink.
06:39So that's at our planned landing location.
06:43So if we're able to get any live views of the ship, that will essentially tell you that we nailed our target.
06:52Able to do that on our sixth flight desk, do it in the daytime, which was really exciting.
06:57All right, so we're about 10 minutes until we're probably going to start hearing some of the other big milestones coming up.
07:19Yep, in about 10 minutes, like Dan said, Starship will be transonic.
07:25This is going to be the period of flight where the velocities of airflow surrounding and flowing past the vehicle are concurrently below at and above the speed of sound,
07:35so somewhere in the range of Mach 0.8 to 1.2.
07:39For reference, commercial jets have a range of cruising speeds, but most of them fly at speeds between Mach 0.74 and Mach 0.85.
07:47So that's 480 to 575 miles per hour or 770 to 930 kilometers per hour.
07:55And after transonic comes subsonic, that just means you're slower than the speed of sound.
08:00We're still well in excess of that right now.
08:03But by the time we hit subsonic, we're essentially belly flopping down.
08:09There we go.
08:09There's that sunlight.
08:10So we're seeing the Earth now come back into view.
08:13One of the other things we're doing during this, and you're going to see Starship kind of pitch in some pretty, not extreme ways, but a little extreme,
08:22as we're trying to really stress the structure of the ship itself, specifically those aft flaps, so the ones in the very bottom of the vehicle.
08:34We're pushing not just how well does the heat shield hold up, but how well does the ship structure hold up.
08:39We are, I mean, we are pushing it beyond essentially what we think we'll have to fly at to do something like a return to launch site.
08:49So, again, may not be a very smooth ride downhill, but we're doing that by design.
08:55We're really trying to find what are the edges that we can operate at, build up a good data set.
09:00But sun is up, clouds and water down below us.
09:04We are just about 10 minutes away, a little less than 10 minutes now, until we start hitting transonic and then subsonic.
09:11Once we hit subsonic, we're basically just belly flopping.
09:16Okay.
09:34All right, so about 55 and a half minutes in, you can see the sun is up.
10:01Again, we intentionally designed these flights to lift off in the evening here so we get these daylight views so we can get as good a video as possible on the ship, assuming we make it all the way down.
10:13We've got at least one buoy powered by Starlink that's out there in the landing zone in the Indian Ocean, hopefully giving us a view again.
10:22If you see any live views not from the ship itself, that means we nailed our landing target.
10:28Starship has passed peak eating.
10:31All right, we just heard the call out that we're past peak eating, so things are looking good so far.
10:36Yeah, looking good.
10:42And at this point, again, the flaps are controlling.
10:45So this movement you're seeing is that forward flap moving to try and just maintain control, maintain attitude of the vehicle as we're coming down.
10:55Checking in on one of our flaps.
11:25We got one of these cameras on all four of the flaps, two in the front, two in the back, giving us really good close-up views.
11:34As we're, we obviously don't have a camera that can see the entire heat shield.
11:40That's, these give us kind of the best that we can do.
11:42But looking at those flaps is really, those are just, you know, super critical for controlling the ship.
11:48You have some ability to maneuver kind of cross range.
11:53So as you're, as you're coming in, you can see, you can see in that indicator, in that indicator at the very bottom right that we've pitched up quite a bit.
12:02So again, we are, we are maximally stressing those aft flaps right now.
12:10Looks like we got a little bit of burn through the very bottom part of it.
12:17Everything's still looking good.
12:18Should maintaining control.
12:20We should be just about five minutes away until we hear that we're transonic.
12:32We should be just about five minutes away until we hear that we're transonic.
12:32Okay.
12:50Still a little bit toasty on the aft skirt of the vehicle as we continue coming in.
13:19Again, we are intentionally stressing the flaps so we can learn all we can.
13:31All right, so now we're already well past peak heating.
13:42Just about 48, 49, counting down to 48 kilometers in altitude.
13:47Expecting that transonic to come.
13:51So transitioning between the speed of sound and subsonic slower than the speed of sound in just a little under four minutes from now.
14:00Right now we've got kind of a lot of forward momentum, a lot of forward velocity, and then eventually by the time we hit subsonic.
14:11All right, here we go.
14:12So this is what we've been talking about where we are going to essentially try to fully deploy those aft flaps and really stress them out.
14:20So again, this is meant to test the extremes for the vehicle.
14:24All right.
14:44See those flaps swinging out?
14:46Again, we are putting ship through the wringer on this flight in.
14:50It's like we're still maintaining control.
15:06It's like we're still maintaining control.
15:06All right.
15:26Flaps earning their paycheck today, getting through kind of that max stressing.
15:31Definitely things looking good so far.
15:36We're about two minutes out now from Starship becoming transonic.
15:41One cool thing to note as we get some of those views showing kind of the whole length of the ship.
15:46One of the changes we made after flight six was to change the tile line a little bit.
15:53So we had kind of scaled back the number of tiles significantly as when we go to catch these ships, you don't want to, I think as Elon said, you don't want to shuck the ship as you catch it and knock all those tiles off.
16:06So we knew we were going to have to kind of peel back that layer a little bit.
16:09And the first time we did it was on flight six and we saw kind of wrinkling and dimples almost in the ship as we were creating these hot spots in the uneven parts of the heat shield.
16:21And so we, to kind of address that, we smoothed it out.
16:25That's why you've got kind of that nice smooth out black line now on the ship.
16:29And just looking at it, we can see kind of a little bit of hot spot, a little bit of warping almost near the payload door.
16:36You can see a little bit of colored patina up above it, but we don't see those kind of deep, almost, you know, they almost look like gouges on that.
16:47So it looks like that's been pretty successful.
16:50So, all right, we are less than a minute away from hitting transonic.
16:56Like, again, pretty soon our kind of, our forward velocity is going to look like it's kind of falling off a cliff.
17:03And Starship will look like it's falling off a cliff as we essentially go into our belly flop.
17:10If you watch some of the high altitude tests or suborbital campaigns, we were able to test that.
17:17That was a pretty fundamental, like, can this thing actually fly?
17:22And we were able to prove that out with that suborbital campaign.
17:27And that's what we're about to see shortly here.
17:52All right, so at this point, we've dropped below the speed of sound.
18:06So Starship itself is subsonic.
18:14We are starting to chill the engines for a landing burn attempt.
18:19Landing flip is supposed to start in a little over two minutes.
18:29Subsonic Indian Ocean, we're on our way.
18:31Starship is subsonic.
18:34There we go.
18:41Farewell space.
18:49All right, so coming up in just a little under two minutes, so we're going to do the flip and the burn.
18:57So we're only using those three center Raptor engines, the C-levels, the ones that can kind of gimbal, that can move around and steer.
19:08Dipping the nose down a little bit.
19:10Got two of our engines chilled in, waiting on one more.
19:24So again, we'll attempt to use three burns for that initial flip.
19:27We eventually go down to just two Raptors for the end of the landing burn.
19:32Just about one minute now from that landing flip and landing burn start.
19:42Structurally, we're looking good.
20:09Got good pressures in our nose cone for everything.
20:12Just about 30 seconds.
20:18So again, we're going to look for the flip.
20:20So Starship's doing its belly flop right now.
20:23We're going to do the flip.
20:24Swing out.
20:25Let's punch through some clouds first.
20:37Here we go.
20:40Starship, landing burn start up.
20:42Seeing three engines.
20:50There's our flip.
20:55There's a buoy.
21:00There's a splashdown.
21:01Oh, man.
21:19Oh, man.
21:20Farewell, Ship 37.
21:22Thank you, buoy cam.
21:23Thank you, buoy cam.
21:24Landing flip.
21:25Landing burn.
21:27Splash out of the Indian Ocean.
21:29There we go.
21:31All right.
21:32That was pretty awesome.
21:34Incredible flight today for both ship and booster.
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