On Ninth Test Flight, SpaceX's Starship Rocket Survives Launch But Not Space
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SpaceX launched its Starship rocket for the ninth time tonight, and for the first time since the sixth flight in November, that enormous launch vehicle's second stage reached space intact. But then things went awry as the upper stage spun out of control and burned up on atmospheric re-entry.
This was not the sequel SpaceX had hoped to stage to the previous two test flights in January and March. Both ended early when Starship's second stage exploded during its climb to space, leaving trails of glowing debris re-entering the atmosphere over the Caribbean and forcing the diversion or delay of dozens of airline flights.
Tuesday's flight lifted off at 6:36 p.m. Central time from SpaceX's Starbase facility at Boca Chica, Texas, following two brief holds to troubleshoot ground equipment. The 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines in the 403-foot-tall rocket's booster—the same first stage used in January's launch—sent it arcing out over the Gulf of Mexico and up to Starship's "hotstage" cutover, where the second stage's engines ignite while still attached to the first stage.
The company did not attempt to catch the booster with the 'chopsticks' arms of its launch tower so it could test a landing burn with an engine out. The booster did not survive that test, instead exploding before it could finish that burn and softly land in the water.
Starship's second stage appeared to be doing much better, with its six Raptors putting it into the planned suborbital trajectory.
'Ship engine cutoff, the three most beautiful words in the English language,' SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot exhaled on the company's livestream. But things went sideways from then on, figuratively and literally.
SpaceX could not complete the next test planned in this mission, deploying simulated Starlink satellites, after the payload bay door failed to open properly. Huot reached for the obligatory space-sci-fi reference: 'HAL told me no, said I'm sorry Dan, I can't do that.'
SpaceX's plans for its broadband satellite constellation include being able to launch at least 50 upgraded Starlinks in one Starship flight. In 2023, Elon Musk suggested the first such launch could happen in 2024; Tuesday's flight was supposed to advance that aimed-for upgrade a little closer to reality.
After a break in video coverage while Starship was in darkness above the Earth, the stream then revealed that Starship's upper stage had begun whirling out of control. 'We did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside of Starship,' Huot reported. 'At this point, we've essentially lost our attitude control with Starship.'
That put an end to the rest of the testing planned for the mission and ensured a fiery doom for Starship. Increasingly intermittent video, relayed via Starlink, showed the vehicle wreathed in brightly colored plasma, with one of its control fins disintegrating from that heat; telemetry stopped with whatever was left of Starship about 37 miles above the Indian Ocean.
Musk put an optimistic spin on the flight in a post on X Tuesday evening: 'Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight!' The CEO also confirmed Huot's report of a tank leak. 'Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase,' Musk continued. 'Lot of good data to review.'
This footage could not have been comfortable viewing at NASA, because the space agency is also counting on the rocket. In 2021, NASA inked a $2.89 billion contract with SpaceX in 2021 to develop a version of Starship's upper stage as a crewed lunar lander for its Artemis return to the Moon. Two years later, the space agency awarded a $3.4 billion contract to Blue Origin in 2023 to develop a second lunar lander to fly on that firm's New Glenn rocket.
President Trump's nominee to head NASA, billionaire payments executive and private astronaut Jared Isaacman, reposted a screengrab of one of Starship's final moments. 'Pretty incredible to get this kind of footage from the extreme environment of reentry. Appreciate the transparency—and bringing us space enthusiasts along through the highs and lows of a test program,' he tweeted.
Isaacman, who has flown to space twice aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon in missions he bankrolled himself, voiced confidence in the future of America's private space industry, which now extends well beyond SpaceX.
'Some may focus on the lows, but behind the efforts of Starship—and other programs like New Glenn, Neutron, Vulcan, Terran, Stoke, etc—is a massive space economy taking shape: tens of thousands of jobs, billions in private investment, all aimed at truly opening the last great frontier,' he wrote. 'When these capabilities arrive, they will spearhead a new era of exploration and discovery—and the lows will become a chapter in a much longer story.'
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