In a recent revelation, audio from SpaceX’s latest Starship test flight, Flight 5, surfaced online, revealing that the Super Heavy booster was just one second away from aborting its landing attempt.
Elon Musk inadvertently posted a three-minute video on X, his social media platform, which featured audio from a meeting discussing the flight. The audio revealed that a misconfigured parameter led to spin pressure in the Raptor engines not increasing as expected during the landing burn.
"We were one second away from that tripping and telling the rocket to abort and try to crash into the ground next to the tower," one unidentified person said. "We had a whole bunch of new aborts and commit criteria that we tried to doublecheck really well, but, I mean, I think our concern was well-placed, and one of these came very close to biting us."
The audio also highlighted other issues encountered during the flight. One major concern was the loss of a cover on a chine, a vertical structure on the booster, as the vehicle went transonic during descent. This cover ripped off over critical equipment, but thankfully, no damage was sustained.
"We wouldn’t have predicted the exact right place, but this cover that ripped off was right on top of a bunch of single point failure valves that must work during the landing burn," a SpaceX official said. "Thankfully, none of those or the harnessing got damaged, but we ripped this chine cover off over some really critical equipment right as landing burn was starting. We have a plan to address that."
The discussion also touched upon an issue with the engine plume during the landing burn, but the video ended before it was fully addressed.
The SpaceX officials involved in the audio discussed plans for the upcoming Flight 6, focusing on risk reduction for the booster rather than expanding the ship’s capabilities. They are also working to balance risk mitigation with speed, as the next flight is not subject to the same schedule constraints as previous launches due to pre-approval from the FAA.
"We’re not taking as much time as we might ideally want to have a very luxurious, like really study everything," one person said. "But given that that is the first launch in a long time — well, really, ever — that we’ve not been FAA driven, we’re trying to go do a reasonable balance of speed and risk mitigation on the booster, specifically."
Musk’s response to the revelation was a simple "Wow!" when informed of the near-abort. He later acknowledged the leak, stating "Yeah 😂," when asked if he was aware that he had shared audio of the Starship telecon.