The ninth integrated test flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster avoided previous issues but encountered new ones as the company aims to ramp up launches this year.
Let’s begin with the good. Flight 9 marked the first time SpaceX used a previously flown Super Heavy booster, which was caught back at the launch pad by a pair of giant metal chopsticks in January and refurbished for Tuesday’s mission.
The Starship upper stage also reached orbit for the first time in 2025 after suffering engine failures on that January mission and another in March. Each time, the rocket exploded and disrupted air travel, prompting the FAA to expand the aircraft hazard area (AHA) for Flight 9.
“Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight!” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X. “Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent.”
However, SpaceX failed to collect critical data during the ship and booster’s reentry. Starship spiralled out of control on orbit, foiling a splashdown in the Indian Ocean and experiments that were designed to gauge its reentry performance. The vehicle also failed to release its first payload — a batch of Starlink satellite simulators — and relight one of its Raptor engines on orbit.
“Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase,” Musk said. “Lot of good data to review.”
Similar tests were planned for Super Heavy. But the booster experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” — SpaceX-speak for an explosion.
What went wrong?
In a postflight update, SpaceX described the Starship issue as an “attitude control error” that prevented a clean reentry. It lost communications with the vehicle about 46 minutes into the mission and said debris is expected to fall in a designated, remote swath of the Indian Ocean.
On its previous two flights, Starship exploded during ascent and rained debris over the Caribbean Sea. The FAA told FLYING that 28 aircraft were diverted and another 40 placed in holding patterns during Flight 8. Ahead of Tuesday’s flight, the agency nearly doubled its AHA due to a “greater probability of failure of the vehicle,” it said in an environmental assessment.
SpaceX attributed the Flight 7 failure to stress from the rocket’s vibrations and made upgrades that it said performed as expected on Flight 8. That mission was curtailed due to a likely hardware failure that caused inadvertent propellant mixing, it said, and further improvements were made. But it appears those issues were avoided on Flight 9.
“Need to look at data to confirm all fixes from flight 8 worked as expected but all evidence points to a new failure mode,” SpaceX propulsion engineer Shana Diez wrote on X.
Diez added that the company must “make sure we understand what happened” to the booster ahead of the next catch attempt and is “optimistic” for a shorter turnaround ahead of that mission. Starship was grounded for more than two months following Flight 8 as SpaceX conducted a mishap investigation. The FAA has yet to require one for Flight 9.
“Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks,” Musk said on X.
Missed opportunities
Flight 9 began with a thunderous liftoff from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas at 6:35 p.m. EDT on Tuesday. Starship completed the ascent burn and engine cutoff to place it in orbit, while Super Heavy debuted a more controlled flip maneuver designed to preserve propellant.
That’s when things went downhill. Starship’s cargo bay door failed to open fully, trapping its payload inside. Moments later, the ship lost attitude control — eliminating a key opportunity for SpaceX to study the vehicle.
The company had successfully caught Super Heavy on three of its past four test flights. But catching and reusing Starship remains elusive. The ability to rapidly refurbish the rocket is a major selling point, as it lowers the time and cost to launch. In a prelaunch interview with Ars Technica, Musk described it as the “holy grail of rocketry.”
SpaceX installed catch fittings on Starship’s sides that it had hoped to test during reentry. It also removed heat shield tiles in potentially vulnerable areas and replaced some of them with materials designed to better protect the vehicle. Its reentry profile was designed to stress these tiles as much as possible.
“The most important thing is data on how to improve the tile design, so it’s basically data during the high heating, reentry phase in order to improve the tiles for the next iteration,” Musk told Ars Technica. “We’ve got like a dozen or more tile experiments. We’re trying different coatings on tiles. We’re trying different fabrication techniques, different attachment techniques.”
Unfortunately, that data was lost with the rocket, which could present a setback. SpaceX aims to launch Starship from Starbase 25 times this year, and the FAA ahead of Flight 9 authorized it to do so. Each mishap investigation soaks up time that could be used to prepare for the next launch.
That’s important, because Starship is a key part of NASA’s effort to return Americans to the moon for the first time in more than half a century.
SpaceX is working under a contract to develop a human landing system (HLS) variant of the rocket for the Artemis 3 lunar landing, scheduled for mid-2027. Before then, it must hit several targets, including an uncrewed moon landing and the deployment of an orbital fuel depot it will use as a waypoint.
Musk’s focus, though, appears to be more on Mars than the moon. The SpaceX CEO recently told CBS Sunday Morning there is “about a 50 percent chance” of landing Starship on the Red Planet in 2026.
