There were two high-profile missions scheduled this week after a challenging weekend that saw the scrub of another attempt to launch the first crewed Starliner and the announcement that the dearMoon project is canceled. In more positive news, it also confirmed that Chang’e 6 landed on the moon’s far side.
Starship was one of two main attractions on this week’s docket and launched on Thursday, June 6 following two wet dress rehearsals and one final destocking to arm the flight termination system ahead of the weekend. The primary goal for the ship to survive re-entry was achieved, including the much anticipated first “flip and burn” landing maneuver since prototype SN15’s successful propulsive landing a little over three years ago. Booster 11 also demonstrated a controlled soft-water landing.
The crewed flight test of the Starliner vehicle successfully launched after being rescheduled to Wednesday, June 5, allowing teams to fix the ground support equipment (GSE) issue that had prevented Saturday’s launch. Before either of these significant test flights, the Chang’e 6 ascender craft launched from the lunar surface on Tuesday, June 4. It spent approximately two days collecting around 2kg of samples from the southern edge of the Apollo basin to return to Earth – the first time in history that samples have been collected from the far side.