Why was a piece of fruit floating inside Starship on its sixth test flight?

Trevor Mogg

Published November 20, 2024 5:12 PM

Yes, you’re looking at a (fake) banana floating in space.

SpaceX

Anyone who watched SpaceX’s sixth test flight of its mighty Starship rocket on Tuesday will have noticed the odd sight of a banana — albeit a fake one — floating in the hold of the spacecraft as it sailed above Earth on its way from the launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, to splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

No, this wasn’t placed there by a sneaky SpaceX engineer as joke. Rather, the full-size, toy banana acted as a zero-gravity indicator so that the mission team could confirm when the vehicle had reached microgravity conditions high above Earth.

“Bananas have been used for quick visual comparisons for quite some time, and our teammates thought it was time to bring the venerated yellow fruit to Starship,” Kate Tice, a quality engineering manager at SpaceX, said in comments reported by Space.com.

Continuing with the banana theme, SpaceX also slapped a sticker of the popular fruit on the outside of the Starship, highlighting the team’s playful approach to showing off the rocket’s massive scale.

The sixth test flight of Starship — comprising the first-stage Super Heavy booster and upper-stage Starship spacecraft — lifted off successfully, with the booster’s 33 Raptor engines creating a colossal 17 million pounds of thrust as it climbed skyward.

Following a nominal ascent and stage separation, the Super Heavy successfully transitioned to its boostback burn to begin its journey back to the launch site. But unlike the fifth test when the launch tower’s giant mechanical arms successfully secured the booster as it returned home, this time automated health checks of critical hardware on the tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt. As a result, the booster executed a pre-planned divert maneuver that sent it into the Gulf of Mexico.

Starship, meanwhile, completed another successful ascent. It was also able to successfully reignite a single Raptor engine during its journey, part of a vital deorbit process.

The spacecraft, complete with its banana, made it through reentry and executed a flip, landing burn, and soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX said.

Data gathered from the mission will provide SpaceX engineers with vital feedback on the flight hardware, giving them a great opportunity to further refine the system ahead of the seventh test. Eventually, SpaceX wants to use the Starship for crew and cargo flights to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

Watch SpaceX’s Starship splashdown in the Indian Ocean at end of fifth test

SpaceX’s Super Heavy rocket was the star of the show during last week’s test flight when it was successfully caught by the launch tower’s giant mechanical arms upon the first attempt.

Minutes earlier, the Super Heavy booster had deployed the upper-stage Starship spacecraft to orbit as part of the fifth test flight of the world’s most powerful rocket.

SpaceX to top the Super Heavy catch with another astonishing feat

SpaceX achieved a spectacular first on Sunday when it used a pair of giant mechanical arms to catch the 70-meter-tall Super Heavy booster just minutes after it deployed the Starship spacecraft to orbit in the vehicle’s fifth test flight.

But SpaceX isn’t stopping there. As part of its efforts to create a fully reusable spaceflight system for the Starship — comprising the first-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft — SpaceX will attempt to catch not only the booster, but also the spacecraft.

SpaceX shares spectacular close-up footage of Starship launch and landing

SpaceX has shared footage, which you can watch below, showing a spectacular close-up view of the Starship’s launch and landing on Sunday.

The mission involved the fifth test flight of the Starship, comprising the first-stage Super Heavy booster and upper-stage Starship spacecraft.

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