SpaceX completes investigation into recent Starship failures, clears the way for Flight 10

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The U.S Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has closed its investigation into SpaceX’s Starship mission failure this spring and given the inexperienced gentle for Starship Flight Test 10 to proceed this weekend.

Starship Flight 9 launched on May 27 from SpaceX’s Starbase manufacturing and check facility in South Texas. The mission ended with the loss of both the Super 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. Space Force, NASA and the National Transportation and Safety Board. Investigators traced the failures to separate structural points in each of the vehicle’s phases, according to a recent SpaceX assertion.

In the same update, SpaceX also shared findings about the explosion that occurred on June 18, at one of Starbase’s ground check websites. The incident destroyed Ship 36, the higher stage beforehand tapped for Starship’s upcoming launch, as nicely as the surrounding infrastructure.

Flight 9 was the third Starship launch of 2025. On all three event, the higher stage failed to obtain its main mission targets. Flight 7 and Flight 8, which launched in January and March, respectively, each ended in 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 first reuse of a Super Heavy, a vehicle recognized as Booster 14. The booster pulled off a clean hot-stage separation from Ship, at which level the booster navigated back toward Earth on a steeper-than-normal angle of assault.

SpaceX has efficiently caught three Super Heavy boosters at Starbase utilizing giant chopstick arms on the “Mechazilla” launch tower, but Booster 14 focused a managed splashdown offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, in order to push Super Heavy to its aerodynamic limits. About six minutes into flight, Super Heavy relit 12 of the 13 engines supposed for its touchdown burn, but exploded a little more than half a mile (1 kilometer) above the gulf. SpaceX believes the elevated descent forces ruptured an inside propellant line, igniting Super Heavy’s liquid oxygen and methane fuels.

SpaceX says it plans to lower the angle of assault on future flights, to cut back stress during booster descents. However, another modification the company will make to Super Heavy — though not one included for Flight 10 — will help gain some of those assault angles back. Future Super Heavy boosters shall be made with (*10*)redesigned grid fins, with a transition from 4 to three aerodynamic control surfaces that are 50% bigger than those presently in use, to support boosters’ trajectories during descent and enable for some larger angles of assault.

After separating from the booster, Flight 9’s higher stage, recognized as Ship 35, initiated its first deliberate engine burn. About midway through that maneuver, however, onboard sensors detected a methane leak developing inside Starship’s nosecone, SpaceX said in the recent update. Though Starship’s systems have been in a position to compensate for the change in strain through the completion of the roughly five-minute ascent burn, the leak step by step destabilized the vehicle’s angle control and prevented the mission’s deliberate in-space maneuvering check and deployment of dummy Starlink satellites.

Ship 35 finally regained control, but liquid methane pooling in the ahead part of the nosecone then triggered the full venting of the spacecraft’s remaining fuel into space, leaving the vehicle to coast toward reentry. SpaceX said that Ship 35 “reentered Earth’s environment in an off-nominal angle,” after which the company misplaced communications with the vehicle about 46 minutes into flight.

Final telemetry was acquired as the spacecraft was descending over the Indian Ocean, where SpaceX had been hoping the vehicle would make a managed splashdown. Investigators say the trigger of Ship 35’s points might be traced to a failure in a gasoline diffuser used to pressurize the main fuel tank, which engineers have been in a position to replicate at SpaceX’s check website in McGregor, Texas. They say up to date variations have since handed qualification campaigns simulating 10 instances its anticipated service life.

Just weeks after Flight 9, another Starship higher stage — Ship 36 — was destroyed during ground testing on the stand at Starbase’s Massey’s website. The spacecraft exploded as it was present process cryogenic fuel loading in preparation for a static fire check. The “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” or RUD, as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has beforehand referred to such mishaps, resulted in the whole loss of Ship 36 and intensive injury to the surrounding infrastructure.

SpaceX traced the root trigger to a composite overwrapped strain vessel (COPV), used to store nitrogen in Starship’s payload bay. The failure was induced by “undetectable or under-screened damage” to the COPV, which compromised the vehicle’s construction and induced the propellant leak and subsequent explosion on the stand.

In response, SpaceX said that it has lowered the working strain for COPVs and added protecting covers to guard the tanks during Starship meeting. SpaceX has also launched new COPV inspection and testing procedures, including a “non-destructive evaluation method” for detecting any inside injury.

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— SpaceX’s Starship explodes in Texas during preparations for tenth check flight

“Every lesson learned, through both flight and ground testing, continues to feed directly into designs for the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy,” the SpaceX assertion said.

Starship Flight 10 and Flight 11 shall be the remaining two of the giant rocket’s current design era, “each with test objectives designed to expand the envelope on vehicle capabilities as we iterate towards fully and rapidly reusable, reliable rockets,” SpaceX’s update said.

The next iteration of Super Heavy and Starship will need to choose up the tempo to qualify in time to fly as half of NASA’s Artemis 3 moon mission. NASA chosen Starship as the lunar lander for the mission, which can put astronauts on the moon for the first time since the remaining Apollo mission in 1972. NASA is presently focusing on 2027 for the launch of Artemis 3, and Starship’s recent test-flight points are unlikely to quell ongoing considerations at the space company that Starship’s development 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 studies of injury or injury induced by the loss of both autos on Starship’s Flight 9. “SpaceX can now proceed with Starship Flight 10 launch operations under its current license.”

Liftoff of Starship Flight 10 is predicted during a launch window that begins Sunday (Aug. 24) at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT). SpaceX will stream the mission live on its web site, as nicely as its account on X. Space.com will also carry the broadcast on our homepage, beginning about half-hour before liftoff.