SpaceX Starship: Smooth launch but spacecraft makes uncontrolled re-entry

It's a bittersweet ending for Starship's ninth test flight.

The spacecraft made it through more milestones on this outing than it had so far this year, but issues cropped up in orbit that prevented several key tech demonstrations. We should learn more in the coming days and weeks as SpaceX investigates what went wrong.

Still, the overall outcome will be welcome good news for SpaceX after two previous tests failed less than 10 minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX officials confirmed that they lost contact with Starship a few minutes ago. It’s not yet known precisely where the vehicle broke up and landed.

That essentially ends today’s test flight.

“Still a lot of work to do, but really big moment,” Huot said on the livestream.

Camera views are intermittent at this point as Starship is spinning and as it starts to re-enter Earth's atmosphere. It's likely that the spacecraft will break apart soon, so it's also likely that we won't see much more from onboard Starship.

SpaceX is preparing for Starship to make an uncontrolled re-entry by venting all of the remaining propellant onboard.

The vehicle is expected to come back within its planned re-entry zone, where aircraft and boats have been cleared out.

The spacecraft is likely to break up as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere, scattering debris over the Indian Ocean.

After a smooth start to Starship's ninth test flight, we appear to have hit some snags.

Starship was unable to fully open its payload bay door, preventing it from deploying several simulated Starlink satellites. And about 30 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX confirmed a leak in Starship's fuel tank systems.

“We’ve been dealing with some leaks on the Ship,” SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the livestream. “This is also what led to that loss of attitude control. So at this point, we are kind of in a spin.”

Huot confirmed that mission controllers are opting to skip a tech demo that involved Starship’s relighting one of its Raptor engines in orbit.

Starship appears to be in a spin, which means mission controllers can no longer control its attitude in orbit.

The spacecraft is still expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere, but it may burn up as a result of the loss of control.

“No matter what, we are going to enter. However, this lowers the chance of this as a controlled re-entry,” SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the livestream.

Mission controllers will try to relight one of Starship's Raptor engines in orbit as a tech demonstration before the vehicle tries to return to Earth.

Starship has already made it farther in this test flight than it had so far this year. That will be welcome news for SpaceX and Musk after two consecutive failed flights (one in January and the other in March) ended with the upper stage exploding less than 10 minutes after liftoff.

For today's re-entry attempt, SpaceX engineers removed metallic tiles from Starship to assess vulnerable areas on the vehicle as it makes the scorching journey through the atmosphere.

Starship appears to have run into an issue with opening its payload bay door. Mission controllers have cut short that experiment without deploying the simulated Starlink satellites.

Among the mission objectives in today’s ninth starship test flight was to test the reuse the Starship’s super heavy booster for the first time.

Unlike in recent test flights, in which Super Heavy was caught in chopstick arms, today was a test of the SpaceX rapid reusability goals. But rather than return to Earth in the ocean, as intended, the Super Heavy exploded moments before splashdown, the livestream confirmed.

Today's flight is already a big step forward for SpaceX, getting farther than where both previous flights failed. In Starship's seventh flight in January and its eighth flight in March, mission controllers lost contact with the upper-stage vehicle less than 10 minutes after liftoff.

If all continues going to plan, the upper-stage vehicle will open its payload door and attempt to deploy simulated Starlink satellites.

Mission controllers lost telemetry with the Super Heavy booster, suggesting it most likely made a hard landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mission controllers reported that the upper-stage Ship vehicle cut off its engines and successfully reached its orbital trajectory.

Five minutes after liftoff, Super Heavy is descending rapidly. SpaceX is experimenting with "off-nominal" scenarios. On today's flight, the booster flipped into an intentionally steeper-than-usual angle.

SpaceX expects the first-stage booster to make a "hard splashdown" in the Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile, the upper-stage vehicle appears to be performing well so far, with all six engines continuing to fire as it accelerates into space.

All 33 Raptor engines lit successfully as the Super Heavy booster ascended skyward.

This is SpaceX's first time reusing a first-stage booster on a Starship test flight. This particular Super Heavy booster flew on Starship's seventh test flight in January.

Starship lifted off shortly after 7:30 p.m. ET, rocketing into the skies over South Texas.

The countdown clock is ticking again, proceeding toward a launch attempt in less than 10 seconds.

The countdown started up again after a few short moments, but mission controllers called another hold. The countdown clock has been reset to T-minus 40 seconds.

SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said the second hold was triggered by a "ground-side issue," but we don't have many details yet.

SpaceX has decided to hold the countdown at T-minus 40 seconds to allow mission controllers to "work through final checkouts" and monitor one of the engines on the Super Heavy booster, according to SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot.

SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said the company could send the first Starship to Mars as early as next year. That trip is likely to be uncrewed, but we will probably hear more about that during Elon Musk's presentation after today's test flight.

Musk is expected to speak later today about “the road to making life multiplanetary.”

Jessie Anderson, a senior production engineering manager at SpaceX, said failure on Starship’s last test flight in early March was traced to a hardware failure in one of the upper-stage’s raptor engines.

Starship’s eighth test flight was cut short after mission controllers lost contact with the upper-stage vehicle roughly nine minutes after liftoff. The vehicle exploded, and witnesses in Florida and parts of the Caribbean captured dramatic videos of a ball of smoke overhead and pieces of debris streaking across the sky.

Investigation into SpaceX Starship explosion

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Anderson said that while the March flight was similar to the explosive outcome on Starship's seventh flight back in January, investigators found different causes.

“This was a different failure than we saw on flight seven, and the fixes that we put in place did work as expected, so this was a new issue on flight eight,” Anderson said on SpaceX’s livestream.

In an interview today, Musk underscored the importance of tile performance in test flight 9.

“By far most important thing is high heating phase of re-entry and seeing how the tiles perform. Think of this as a tiles mission,” he told YouTuber Tim Dodd.

Musk said that will be a crucial aspect of SpaceX’s rapid reusability goal to eventually take humans to Mars in an efficient way, which he’s looking to do sooner rather than later.

Musk also called the NASA Artemis program, which aims to bring humans back to the moon, “objectively feeble” in comparison with his SpaceX mission to get humans to Mars.

“The goals of Artemis are so small,” he said. “We should either do a base on the moon or we should send humans to Mars, not just try to do the same thing they did 56 years ago.”

SpaceX officials said the company is targeting a liftoff at the top of the launch window, at 7:30 p.m. ET. Mission controllers are not tracking any technical issues with the rocket, and weather conditions seem to be good for today's test flight.

You can tune in to watch Starship's ninth test flight. The broadcast is available on SpaceX's website and on X.

Tonight’s test flight will be the first from the country’s newest city: Starbase. It officially became an incorporated city in Texas this month.

Residents — predominantly SpaceX employees — voted overwhelmingly in favor of the city on May 3, which Cameron County then officially recognized on May 20. Also voted in were Mayor Robert Peden and city commissioners Jordan Buss and Jenna Petrzelka — also all seemingly current or former SpaceX employees.

SpaceX has begun loading liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellant into the upper-stage Starship vehicle. Once that is complete, fuel will be loaded into the Super Heavy booster.

Musk recently stepped back from his role in the Trump administration overseeing sweeping cuts and layoffs across the federal government to refocus on SpaceX and his other businesses. His work as part of the Department of Government Efficiency has been controversial, and he has faced backlash against Tesla that has hurt its stock.

Musk said this month he would scaling back his government work to devote more time to his businesses.

After today’s test flight, Musk is expected to give an update on SpaceX and a presentation about “the road to making life multiplanetary.”

SpaceX will livestream the event on its website beginning at around 7 p.m. ET. After liftoff, the flight is expected to last a little over an hour, ending with the upper-stage vehicle splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

Today's launch window opens at 7:30 p.m. ET and will last 60 minutes. SpaceX has said that if, for whatever reason, there is a delay or a scrub, it has other launch opportunities in the coming days.

SpaceX has shown three times that the first-stage Super Heavy booster is capable of returning to Earth and settling on chopstick-like robotic arms at the company's South Texas launch site. But this time around, don't expect to see the elaborate "catch" maneuver.

Today's test flight will be the first to reuse a Super Heavy booster that flew on a previous mission (Starship’s seventh test flight in January).

SpaceX said it plans to experiment with several “off-nominal scenarios” to study how the booster performs. Mission controllers will also command Super Heavy to flip around before they initiate a burn that will take it back to Earth. Because of all those tests, the first-stage booster won't return to the launch site and will instead make a "hard splashdown" in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the company.

Starship’s two previous flights ended in failure after the upper-stage vehicles exploded as they were still accelerating into space. Both incidents occurred less than 10 minutes after liftoff and rained dust and debris over the Gulf of Mexico and parts of the Caribbean.

The Federal Aviation Administration last week cleared Starship to fly again but said it is expanding hazard zones — areas where boats and air traffic must not enter — to include 1,600 nautical miles east of the South Texas launch site, through the Straits of Florida and including the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.

It's not uncommon for new rockets and spacecraft to fail, so the risks for today's test flight are high. As with the eight previous Starship launches, today's outing will be uncrewed.

SpaceX officials have said they are likely to conduct hundreds of test missions before any humans fly aboard the next-generation megarocket.

If all goes according to plan, today's test flight is expected to last about an hour.

SpaceX said it plans to experiment with several “off-nominal scenarios” with the first-stage Super Heavy booster. The booster will not try to return to its launch site this time around; instead, it will make what's anticipated to be a "hard splashdown" in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the company.

The upper-stage vehicle, meanwhile, will try to deploy eight simulated Starlink satellites that would eventually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Mission controllers will also try to relight one of the spacecraft’s Raptor engines in space. After that, the Starship vehicle will prepare to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and splash down in the Indian Ocean.

It's Starship test day, yet again.

SpaceX's massive rocket is lined up for its ninth uncrewed test flight, with the 60-minute launch window opening at 7:30 p.m. ET. Today’s launch will take place from SpaceX’s facility in South Texas.

Starship is the most powerful rocket ever developed. The 400-foot-tall behemoth is bigger even than NASA's retired Saturn V rocket, which was used during the Apollo moon program.

Starship consists of two parts: a first-stage booster known as Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft dubbed Starship.

The megarocket is the cornerstone of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's goal of reaching Mars, but NASA also selected Starship to carry astronauts to and from the lunar surface as part of its efforts to return to the moon.