UPDATED 2:27 PM ET Nov. 18, 2024 PUBLISHED 12:29 PM ET Nov. 18, 2024 PUBLISHED 12:29 PM EST Nov. 18, 2024 SHARE BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas — Coming off the heels of its successful launch and landing of its Starship last month, SpaceX is preparing for a sixth flight test of the spaceship that many hope will return humans to the moon. What You Need To Know The launch will happen at the Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas This will be the sixth test for the rocket The spacecraft is known as Starship while the rocket booster is called the Super Heavy. When they are stacked together, they are known as Starship. In the last test, the first-stage booster was caught by the launch tower’s metal chop sticks The third test took place in March 2024, and while it was not a complete success, a number of accomplishments were made, stated SpaceX: All Raptor engines lighting up A completed a propellant transfer demonstration The second time the hot stage separation worked The craft's heat shield being intact The payload doors, known as Pez door, worked The first time Starship was in space The longest Starship test so far As mentioned, it was not a fully successful operation. While 13 of the 33 Raptor engines of the Super Heavy lit up as designed following a stage separation, six of the lit engines shut down, which triggered an early boost-back shutdown. Since 13 engines were needed for the landing of the Super Heavy booster and only six shut down, that left seven, but only two could reach mainstage ignition and the booster did not survive the landing. SpaceX believed the cause of the issue was the persistent filter blockage of the liquid oxygen going into the engines, which happened in the first test flight. For the Starship spacecraft itself, it was mostly functioning until 49 minutes into its mission. “Several minutes after Starship began its coast phase, the vehicle began losing the ability to control its attitude. Starship continued flying its nominal trajectory but given the loss of attitude control, the vehicle automatically triggered a pre-planned command to skip its planned on-orbit relight of a single Raptor engine,” SpaceX explained. Starship was ultimately in space for the first time and sending data to the SpaceX team, but the lack of attitude control caused its destruction. “The most likely root cause of the unplanned roll was determined to be clogging of the valves responsible for roll control. SpaceX has since added additional roll control thrusters on upcoming Starships to improve attitude control redundancy and upgraded hardware for improved resilience to blockage,” stated SpaceX. During the fourth test in June 2024, additional thrusters were added to Starship to prevent it from rolling, which lead to its predecessor’s destruction in test three. Things were going to plan during test four until re-entry. As the ship was coming in at more than 11,800 mph (19,000 kmh), heating tiles were seen coming off it as a landing flap started to come apart. However, the flap stayed on, and it made it through its re-entry in the Indian Ocean for the first time. During its fifth test in October 2024, for the first time, the rocket booster returned to the launch pad and was caught by the chopsticks of the 480-foot (146 meter) launch tower.