Starship Flight 9 - SpaceX

Starship’s 9th suborbital test flight will be a sight to see. The third flight of a version two ship, this flight will most likely showcase the first attempt at catching a ship. This animation depicts what will hopefully happen.

A few disclaimers -

I am currently away, all of the modeling and animation for this video was done months ago and is not completely accurate. This was before ship 33 had ever been spotted and when the second OLT was earlier in construction. Some of the ship's features were attempts at guessing what starship v2 would actually look like, along with the second OLT. This was also when less knowledge was available about flight 8, so some details of how events will occur may be slightly off.

Additionally -

A lot of comments have discussed the roll program that I visualized the ship doing right before the catch. Many seem to think this was an avoidance maneuver so the flaps would not hit the chopsticks, however, this was not the case. The ship will re-enter the atmosphere with the heat shield facing pretty much due east. The chopsticks on OTL-B face due north. So for the ship to be aligned correctly, it would have to correct its orientation sometime before the catch. I assumed this would occur after the flip maneuver, however, I now see that this could occur prior to the flip as well.