SpaceX upgrades launch tower to ensure Starship Flight 7 booster catch

SpaceX has missed the Starship Flight 6 booster catch opportunity, which led to new launch tower upgrades in Flight 7 to ensure that the catch goes in the right direction.

During flight 5, the company attempted the first-ever booster catch and it was successful. However, the same charm didn’t repeat with Flight 6 due to some issues in the launch tower arms, affecting key technologies after the rocket left the launch pad.

Due to the flight fail-safe plan, the flight director denied booster catch and performed a splash landing in the Gulf of Mexico. This plan requires healthy systems on the booster and tower to get the mission director’s node.

The flight director needs to send the command prior to boostback burn completion, or if automated health checks must acceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the tower. If a good parameter is not met, the booster will default to a trajectory, splashing the ship into the sea for splashdown.

Launch Tower lifting off Starship booster for catch practice (Source – SpaceX)

After identifying this issue, Flight 7 will test several radar sensors on the tower chopsticks, aiming to improve the accuracy in measuring the distance between the chopsticks and the vehicle during catch phase.

That’s not it, the launch and catch tower is getting new hardware upgrades that will increase reliability for booster catch. These include the protection of sensors on the tower chopsticks that were damaged during Flight 6.

SpaceX could attempt to launch Flight 7 as soon as January 10 and already received the FAA’s license.