SpaceX launched its sixth Starship rocket Tuesday, proving for the first time that the stainless steel ship can maneuver in space and paving the way for an even larger, upgraded vehicle slated to debut on the next test flight.

The only hiccup was an abortive attempt to catch the rocket's Super Heavy booster back at the launch site in South Texas, something SpaceX achieved on the previous flight on October 13. The Starship upper stage flew halfway around the world, reaching an altitude of 118 miles (190 kilometers) before plunging through the atmosphere for a pinpoint slow-speed splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The sixth flight of the world's largest launcher—standing 398 feet (121.3 meters) tall—began with a lumbering liftoff from SpaceX's Starbase facility near the US-Mexico border at 4 pm CST (22:00 UTC) Tuesday. The rocket headed east over the Gulf of Mexico, propelled by 33 Raptor engines clustered on the bottom of its Super Heavy first stage.

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Early Sunday morning, SpaceX will try something no one has ever done before. If all goes according to plan, around seven minutes after lifting off from South Texas, the huge stainless steel booster from SpaceX's Starship rocket will come back to the launch pad and slow to a hover, allowing powerful mechanical arms to capture it in midair.

This is SpaceX's approach to recovering Starship's Super Heavy booster. If it works, this method will make it easier and faster to reuse the rocket than it is to recycle boosters from SpaceX's smaller Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Falcon 9's boosters usually come down on a floating drone ship stationed hundreds of miles out to sea, requiring SpaceX to return the rocket to shore for refurbishment.

“We’re going for high reusability," said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability.

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The clash between SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration escalated this week, with Elon Musk calling for the head of the federal regulator to resign after he defended the FAA's oversight and fines levied against the commercial launch company.

The FAA has said it doesn't expect to determine whether to approve a launch license for SpaceX's next Starship test flight until late November, two months later than the agency previously communicated to Musk's launch company. Federal regulators are reviewing changes to the rocket's trajectory necessary for SpaceX to bring Starship's giant reusable Super Heavy booster back to the launch pad in South Texas. This will be the fifth full-scale test flight of Starship but the first time SpaceX attempts such a maneuver on the program.

This week, SpaceX assembled the full Starship rocket on its launch pad at the company's Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas. "Starship stacked for Flight 5 and ready for launch, pending regulatory approval," SpaceX posted on X.

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Enlarge / A pedestrian walks past a flown Falcon 9 booster at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, on Tuesday, the same day Elon Musk said he will relocate the headquarters to Texas. (credit: Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images)

Elon Musk said Tuesday that he will move the headquarters of SpaceX and his social media company X from California to Texas in response to a new gender identity law signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Musk's announcement, made via a post on X, follows his decision in 2021 to move the headquarters of the electric car company Tesla from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, in the wake of coronavirus lockdowns in the Bay Area the year before. Now, two of Musk's other major holdings are making symbolic moves out of California: SpaceX to the company's Starbase launch facility near Brownsville, Texas, and X to Austin.

The new gender identity law, signed by Governor Newsom, a Democrat, on Monday, bars school districts in California from requiring teachers to disclose a change in a student's gender identification or sexual orientation to their parents. Musk wrote on X that the law was the "final straw" prompting the relocation to Texas, where the billionaire executive and his companies could take advantage of lower taxes and light-touch regulations.

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Enlarge (credit: Getty | Yui Mok)

The strain of H5N1 bird flu isolated from a dairy worker in Texas was 100 percent fatal in ferrets used to model influenza illnesses in humans. However, the virus appeared inefficient at spreading via respiratory droplets, according to newly released study results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The data confirms that H5N1 infections are significantly different from seasonal influenza viruses that circulate in humans. Those annual viruses make ferrets sick but are not deadly. They have also shown to be highly efficient at spreading via respiratory droplets, with 100 percent transmission rates in laboratory settings. In contrast, the strain from the Texas man (A/Texas/37/2024) appeared to have only a 33 percent transmission rate via respiratory droplets among ferrets.

"This suggests that A/Texas/37/2024-like viruses would need to undergo changes to spread efficiently by droplets through the air, such as from coughs and sneezes," the CDC said in its data summary. The agency went on to note that "efficient respiratory droplet spread, like what is seen with seasonal influenza viruses, is needed for sustained person-to-person spread to happen."

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Enlarge / The rocket for SpaceX's fourth full-scale Starship test flight awaits liftoff from Starbase, the company's private launch base in South Texas. (credit: SpaceX)

The Federal Aviation Administration approved the commercial launch license for the fourth test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket Tuesday, with liftoff from South Texas targeted for just after sunrise Thursday.

"The FAA has approved a license authorization for SpaceX Starship Flight 4," the agency said in a statement. "SpaceX met all safety and other licensing requirements for this test flight."

Shortly after the FAA announced the launch license, SpaceX confirmed plans to launch the fourth test flight of the world's largest rocket at 7:00 am CDT (12:00 UTC) Thursday. The launch window runs for two hours.

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