SpaceX is preparing for the sixth test flight of its mega rocket Starship, with less than a week left.
Elon Musk’s company will bring Starship 6’s 165-foot-tall (50-meter-tall) upper stage to the Starbase site in south Texas for testing ahead of its scheduled Nov. 18 launch. It was taken to the launch pad.
SpaceX chronicled the X milestone, posting three photos of the move on Tuesday (November 12).
There is a “scale” banana on the top of the starship. (Image credit: SpaceX via X)
One of the photos is a close-up highlighting some of the colorful artwork that adorns the stainless steel spacecraft. A pixelated smiling cartoon banana with a relatively realistic banana.
This is apparently a reference to the “bananas to scale” joke that engineers and other aerospace experts, including United Launch Alliance CEO Tori Bruno, like to tell.
Related: Starship and Super Heavy Explained
The sixth starship upper stage next to the launch tower at the South Texas starbase. (Image credit: SpaceX via X)
Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. The vehicle consists of an upper stage known as the Starship, or simply “Ship”, and a huge first stage booster called the Super Heavy. Stacking these two elements gives the rocket a height of approximately 400 feet (122 m).
Both Starship stages are designed for complete and rapid reuse, which SpaceX believes will usher in a new era of spaceflight and exploration.
Starship has flown five times so far, in April and November 2023, and in March, June, and October of this year. During the most recent flight, which took place on October 13, SpaceX successfully landed the Super Heavy on the launch pad, catching the giant booster in the “chopstick” arm of Starbase’s launch tower.
The airline is aiming to repeat this feat on its sixth flight. Meanwhile, the upper stage is scheduled to land in the Indian Ocean like Flight 5.
