SpaceX’s ninth test flight of Starship launches into space, ends in a spin

SpaceX’s Starship successfully separated from its Super Heavy rocket booster and reached orbit Tuesday evening, but later began spinning and made an uncontrolled re-entry into the Indian Ocean. SpaceX had cleared the surrounding airspace where Starship was coming down, according to the company.

The ninth test flight provided a mix of successes and failures for the company. It was the smoothest Starship test of the year, following two consecutive explosions. Starship, launched atop the Super Heavy booster, lifted off from SpaceX’s facility in southern Texas on Tuesday evening. It was also the first launch to use a flight-proven Super Heavy booster, which had launched and returned during Starship’s seventh flight test.

The heavy booster successfully separated and Starship entered space. But the ship was unable to open a side cargo hatch to deploy mock satellites in one planned test. Later in the flight, Starship lost attitude control, meaning it could no longer orient itself properly for re-entry.

The ninth flight test came less than a week after the Federal Aviation Administration cleared SpaceX to perform the test flight of its Starship rocket system following those back-to-back explosions earlier this year.

In January, SpaceX caught the Starship’s heavy booster rocket on its descent for a second time. Starship successfully separated from the booster and ignited its rockets to ascend to orbit, but it was soon lost after suffering an anomaly. Debris from Starship fell into the airspace near Puerto Rico, prompting the FAA to reroute several aircraft in the airspace.

SpaceX conducted another test in March. This time, the Super Heavy booster successfully separated was caught by the launch tower in Texas for a third time. Starship reached space, but eight minutes into the flight, the ship lost multiple Raptor engines and began to spiral.

As a result of the two explosions, the FAA expanded the size of hazard areas in the U.S. and other countries for the flight based on an updated safety analysis provided by SpaceX. After completing an investigation in the loss of Starship on its eighth flight test, SpaceX made several hardware changes to increase reliability.