Spacex’s Starship Rocket and Super Heavy Booster Lift on their ninth trial flight integrated by the company launch pad into Texas. Credit: Livestream Spacex
The ninth integrated test flight of Spacex’s Starship Rocket and Super Heavy Booster have avoided previous problems, but has encountered new ones while the company aims to increase launches this year.
Let’s start with the good. Flight 9 marked the first time that Spacex used a previously dried super heavy booster, which was captured on the launch pad by a couple of gigantic metal chopsticks in January and renewed for Tuesday’s mission.
The upper phase of Starship also reached the orbit for the first time in 2025 after suffering from engine failures on that January mission and another in March. Each time, the rocket exploded and interrupted the aerial journey, pushing the FAA to expand the area of the danger of aircraft (AHA) for flight 9.
“The spaceship came to the scheduled cutting of the ship’s engine, then a great improvement compared to the last flight!” Elon Musk, CEO of Spacex, wrote on X. “Furthermore, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during the rise”.
However, Spacex was unable to collect critical data during the ship and the return of the Booster. Starship escaped control over the orbit, selling off a splashdown in the Indian Ocean and experiments designed to evaluate his return performance. Even the vehicle was not able to release its first useful load – a lot of Starlink satellite simulators – and rekindle one of its raptor engines in orbit.
“The losses caused the loss of the main pressure of the tank during the coast and the return phase,” Musk said. “Many good data to review.”
Similar tests were scheduled for Super Heavy. But the booster has experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” -Spacex-Speak for an explosion.
What went wrong?
In a postflight update, Spacex described the spacecra problem as a “attitude control error” that prevented a clean return. He lost communications with the vehicle about 46 minutes on the mission and said the debris should fall into a remote and remote band of the Indian Ocean.
In his previous two flights, the spaceship exploded during the rise and rained debris on the Caribbean Sea. La Faa said Fly That 28 planes were diverted and another 40 placed in detention patterns during flight 8. Before the flight on Tuesday, the agency almost doubled its AHA due to a “greater probability of bankruptcy of the vehicle”, said in an environmental evaluation.
Spacex has attributed the failure of flight 7 for stress from the vibrations of the rocket and made the updates that carried out as expected on flight 8. That mission has been reduced due to a probable hardware failure which caused an involuntary mixing of the propellant, he said, and further improvements were made. But it seems that those problems have been avoided on flight 9.
“It is necessary to examine the data to confirm all the corrections of flight 8 they worked as expected, but all tests indicate a new fault mode,” wrote the engineer of propulsion Spacex Shana Diez on X.
Diez added that the company must “make sure to understand what happened” to the Booster in view of the next attempt to catch and is “optimistic” for a shorter turning point in view of that mission. The spaceship was founded for more than two months after flight 8 while Spacex led an accident survey. The FAA has yet to request one for flight 9.
“The launch of the cadence for the next 3 flights will be faster, at about 1 every 3-4 weeks,” Musk said on X.
Lost opportunities
Flight 9 began with a thunderous take -off from the SPACEX Starbase structure in Texas at 18:35 EDT Tuesday. The spaceship completed the cut of burns and the engine to put it in orbit, while Super Heavy debuted with a more controlled launch maneuver designed to preserve the propellant.
This is when things went downhill. The door of the Baia del Cargo di Starship has failed to open completely, trapping its useful load inside. A few moments later, the ship has lost control of the attitude – eliminating a key opportunity for Spacex to study the vehicle.
The company had successfully captured very heavy in three of her last four test flights. But capturing and reusing the spaceship remains elusive. The ability to quickly renew the rocket is an important strong point, as it reduces time and cost for launch. In a prelaunic interview with Ars Technica, Musk described it as the “Holy Grail of the Rocketthry”.
Spacex installed fittings for catches on the starship sides that he had hoped to test during the return. He also removed the heat shield tiles in potentially vulnerable areas and replaced some with materials designed to better protect the vehicle. His return profile was designed to underline these tiles as much as possible.
“The most important thing is the data on how to improve the design of the tiles, so the data is basically during the high heating phase and return in order to improve the tiles for the next iteration,” Musk said to Ars Technica. “We have a dozen tile experiments. We are trying different coverings on the tiles. We are trying different manufacturing techniques, different attachment techniques.”
Unfortunately, those data were lost with the rocket, which could present a setback. Spacex aims to launch Starship from Starbase 25 times this year and Faa in front of flight 9 has authorized him to do so. Each absolute accident survey The time that could be used to prepare for the next launch.
It is important, because the spaceship is a fundamental part of NASA’s effort to bring the Americans back to the moon for the first time in more than half a century.
Spacex is working with a contract to develop a variant of the rocket of the human landing system (HLS) for the lunar landing of Artemis 3, scheduled for mid -2027. Before then, it must hit several objectives, including an invoked moon landing and the deployment of a deposit of orbital fuels that will use such as Waypoint.
Musk’s attention, however, seems to be more on Mars than on the moon. The Spacex CEO recently told CBS Sunday Morning that there is “about 50 % of the chances” to land on the red planet in 2026.
