The usFederal Aviation Administration (FAA) has closed its investigation into SpaceX’s Starship mission failure this spring and given the inexperienced mild for Starship Flight Check 10 to proceed this weekend.
Starship Flight 9 launched on Could 27 from SpaceX’s Starbase manufacturing and take a look at facility in South Texas. The mission ended with the lack of each the Tremendous Heavy booster and the Ship higher stage. SpaceX led the probe into the mishap with oversight from the FAA and help from the U.S. House Drive, NASA and the Nationwide Transportation and Security Board. Investigators traced the failures to separate structural points in every of the automobile’s levels, in response to a current SpaceX assertion.
In the identical replace, SpaceX additionally shared findings in regards to the explosion that occurred on June 18, at one in every of Starbase’s floor take a look at websites. The incident destroyed Ship 36, the higher stage beforehand tapped for Starship’s upcoming launch, in addition to the encircling infrastructure.
Flight 9 was the third Starship launch of 2025. On all three event, the higher stage failed to attain its predominant mission targets. Flight 7 and Flight 8, which launched in January and March, respectively, every led to explosions over the Atlantic Ocean that might be seen from Florida, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos.
Starship’s ninth flight started with a profitable liftoff, and featured the primary reuse of a Tremendous Heavy, a automobile often called Booster 14. The booster pulled off a clear hot-stage separation from Ship, at which level the booster navigated again towards Earth on a steeper-than-normal angle of assault.
SpaceX has efficiently caught three Tremendous Heavy boosters at Starbase utilizing large chopstick arms on the “Mechazilla” launch tower, however Booster 14 focused a managed splashdown offshore within the Gulf of Mexico, as a way to push Tremendous Heavy to its aerodynamic limits. About six minutes into flight, Tremendous Heavy relit 12 of the 13 engines supposed for its touchdown burn, however exploded just a little greater than half a mile (1 kilometer) above the gulf. SpaceX believes the elevated descent forces ruptured an inner propellant line, igniting Tremendous Heavy’s liquid oxygen and methane fuels.
SpaceX says it plans to lower the angle of assault on future flights, to scale back stress throughout booster descents. Nevertheless, one other modification the corporate will make to Tremendous Heavy — although not one included for Flight 10 — will assist acquire a few of these assault angles again. Future Tremendous Heavy boosters might be made with redesigned grid fins, with a transition from 4 to 3 aerodynamic management surfaces which can be 50% bigger than these at the moment in use, to help boosters’ trajectories throughout descent and permit for some greater angles of assault.
After separating from the booster, Flight 9’s higher stage, often called Ship 35, initiated its first deliberate engine burn. About midway by means of that maneuver, nevertheless, onboard sensors detected a methane leak creating inside Starship’s nosecone, SpaceX stated within the current replace. Although Starship’s programs have been capable of compensate for the change in strain by means of the completion of the roughly five-minute ascent burn, the leak regularly destabilized the automobile’s angle management and prevented the mission’s deliberate in-space maneuvering take a look at and deployment of dummy Starlink satellites.
Ship 35 ultimately regained management, however liquid methane pooling within the ahead part of the nosecone then triggered the total venting of the spacecraft’s remaining gas into house, leaving the automobile to coast towards reentry. SpaceX stated that Ship 35 “reentered Earth’s ambiance in an off-nominal angle,” after which the corporate misplaced communications with the automobile about 46 minutes into flight.
Last telemetry was obtained because the spacecraft was descending over the Indian Ocean, the place SpaceX had been hoping the automobile would make a managed splashdown. Investigators say the reason for Ship 35’s points might be traced to a failure in a fuel diffuser used to pressurize the principle gas tank, which engineers have been capable of replicate at SpaceX’s take a look at website in McGregor, Texas. They are saying up to date variations have since handed qualification campaigns simulating 10 instances its anticipated service life.
Simply weeks after Flight 9, one other Starship higher stage — Ship 36 — was destroyed throughout floor testing on the stand at Starbase’s Massey’s website. The spacecraft exploded because it was present process cryogenic gas loading in preparation for a static hearth take a look at. The “fast unscheduled disassembly,” or RUD, as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has beforehand referred to such mishaps, resulted within the complete lack of Ship 36 and in depth injury to the encircling infrastructure.
SpaceX traced the foundation trigger to a composite overwrapped strain vessel (COPV), used to retailer nitrogen in Starship’s payload bay. The failure was brought on by “undetectable or under-screened injury” to the COPV, which compromised the automobile’s construction and induced the propellant leak and subsequent explosion on the stand.
In response, SpaceX stated that it has lowered the working strain for COPVs and added protecting covers to protect the tanks throughout Starship meeting. SpaceX has additionally launched new COPV inspection and testing procedures, together with a “non-destructive analysis methodology” for detecting any inner injury.
Starship’s ninth flight take a look at and subsequent automobile take a look at marketing campaign carried reminders: success comes from what we study, and even the harshest classes supply alternative. A technical abstract of the investigations from Flight 9 and the Ship 36 static hearth anomaly will be discovered right here →… pic.twitter.com/aeHtu7NmcuAugust 15, 2025
“Each lesson discovered, by means of each flight and floor testing, continues to feed immediately into designs for the following technology of Starship and Tremendous Heavy,” the SpaceX assertion stated.
Starship Flight 10 and Flight 11 would be the closing two of the large rocket’s present design technology, “every with take a look at targets designed to increase the envelope on automobile capabilities as we iterate in direction of totally and quickly reusable, dependable rockets,” SpaceX’s replace stated.
The subsequent iteration of Tremendous Heavy and Starship might want to decide up the tempo to qualify in time to fly as a part of NASA’s Artemis 3 moon mission. NASA chosen Starship because the lunar lander for the mission, which can put astronauts on the moon for the primary time because the closing Apollo mission in 1972. NASA is at the moment concentrating on 2027 for the launch of Artemis 3, and Starship’s current test-flight points are unlikely to quell ongoing considerations on the house company that Starship’s improvement could delay the mission additional.
In a assertion launched on Aug. 15, the FAA says it has “accepted the findings of the SpaceX-led investigation,” and confirmed no reviews of damage or injury brought on by the lack of each autos on Starship’s Flight 9. “SpaceX can now proceed with Starship Flight 10 launch operations below its present license.”
Liftoff of Starship Flight 10 is anticipated throughout a launch window that begins Sunday (Aug. 24) at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT). SpaceX will stream the mission reside on its web site, in addition to its account on X. House.com may even carry the published on our homepage, beginning about half-hour earlier than liftoff.
