The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has shut down its investigation into SpaceX’s Starship Mission Failure in this spring and has given green lights for Starsip Flight Test 10 to proceed to the end of this week.
Starsip Flight 9 launched South Texas on 27 May from SpaceX’s Starbase Manufacturing and Test Facility. The mission ended with the loss of both heavy boosters and upper stages of the ship. SpaceX led the FAA to investigate the accident with the oversight and supported the US Space Force, NASA and the National Transport and Security Board. According to a recent SpaceX statement, investigators discovered failures to separate structural issues at each stage of the vehicle.
In the same update, SpaceX also shared the conclusions An explosion occurred on June 18 in one of the ground test sites of Starbase. The phenomenon destroyed the ship 36, the upper stage tapped for the infrastructure nearby with the upcoming launch of the first starship.
Flight 9 2025 was the third starship launch. On all three occasions, the upper phase failed to achieve its main mission goals. Flight 7 and Flight 8, which was launched in January and March respectively, ended in each Atlantic Ocean explosions, which could be seen from Florida, Bahamas and Turks and Cacos.
The ninth flight of starship began with a successful liftoff, and the first reuse of a super heavy was known as booster 14. The booster pulled a clean hot-stage isolation from the ship, on which the booster navigated back to the Earth at a stator-channel-general angle of the attack.
Spacex successfully caught three super heavy boosters in Starbase using huge chopstick arms on the launch tower, but Booster 14 targeted a controlled splashadowne offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, so that the super heavier could push its aerinal boundaries. The flight had an intention of about six minutes, 12 out of 13 engines, 12 out of 12 engines, but a slightly more explosion occurred than half mile (1 km) from the Gulf. Spacex believes that the enlarged descendant forces broke an internal proponent line, igniting super heavy liquid oxygen and methane fuel.
SpaceX says it is planning to reduce the angle of attacks on future flights to reduce stress during the booster lineage. However, another amendment company will do super heavy – although no one is involved for Flight 10 – will help get back some of those attacks angles. Future super heavy boosters will be made with reinstroined grid wings, with infections from four to three aircraft control surfaces that are currently 50% larger than those in use, which help in booster’s trajectory during offspring and allow some high angles of attacks.
After separating from the booster, the upper stage of Flight 9, known as Ship 35, burned its first planned engine. Almost half the way through that maneuver, however, the onboard sensor discovered a methane leakage that developed inside the Nosecon of the starship, SpaceX said in a recent update. Although the starship systems were able to compensate for a change in pressure through the completion of a burn of about five minutes, leakage gradually unstable the vehicle’s approach control and stopped the mission’s planned in-space maneuver test and deployment of dummy starlink satellites.
Ship 35 eventually gained control, but in the front section of Noscon, liquid methane pooling triggers full venting of the remaining fuel of spacecraft in space in space, leaving the vehicle on the coast towards the renin. SpaceX stated that the ship resumed the Earth’s atmosphere in an off-nominal attitude, “after which the company lost communication with the vehicle in about 46 minutes in the flight.
The final telemetry was obtained as the spacecraft was landing over the Indian Ocean, where SpaceX was hoping that the vehicle would make a controlled splashdown. Investigators say the reason for the issues of Ship 35 could be detected in the gas defuser used to pressurize the main fuel tank, which the engineers were able to repeat at the testing site of SpaceX in McGregor, Texas. They say that the updated versions have passed the merit campaign by following their expected service life 10 times.
A few weeks after Flight 9, another starship was destroyed during a ground testing on the stand on the upper stage – Ship 36 – Starbase Massey’s site. The spacecraft exploded as it was undergoing cryogenic fuel loading in preparation for a stable fire test. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as “Rapid unwanted disassemali,” or Rood has previously referred to such an accident, resulting in a total loss of ship 36 and widespread damage to the surrounding infrastructure.
Spacex detected the root cause for an overall overweed pressure vessel (COPV), which is used to store nitrogen in Payload Bay of Starships. This failure caused the COPV due to “undesirable or under-screen damage”, which compromised the structure of the vehicle and led to the explosion on the pre-leakage and later the stand on the stand.
In response, SpaceX stated that it has reduced the operating pressure for COPV and there are protective cover pairs to protect tanks during the Starship assembly. Spacex has also introduced new COPV inspection and testing procedures, including “non-destructive assessment method” to detect any internal damage.
The ninth flight test of starship and later vehicle testing expeditions offered reminders: the success comes from the success we learn, and even rigorous text provides opportunities. A technical summary of the investigation can be found here by flight 9 and ship 36 static fire discrepancy →… pic.twitter.com/aehtu7nmcuAugust 15, 2025
SpaceX’s statement said, “Every lesson learned through both flight and ground tests continues to feed directly to the designs for the next generation starship and super heavy.”
SpaceX’s update stated that the current design generation of Starship Flight 10 and Flight 11 giant rockets would be the final two of the generation, “with each test objectives designed to expand the envelopes on vehicle capabilities as we rejuvenate completely and rapidly re -purpose, reliable rockets,” SpaceX’s update said.
The next recurrence of super heavy and starships will require to lift the speed to fly as part of NASA’s Artemis 3 Moon Mission. NASA selected Starships as the Lunar Lander for the mission, which would put astronauts on the moon for the first time after the final Apollo Mission in 1972. NASA is currently targeting 2027 for the launch of Artemis 3, and the recent Test-flight issues of Starships are unlikely to address the concerns in the space agency that may delay the Mission of Starsep.
In a statement released on August 15, the FAA says it has “accepted the findings of the SpaceX-LED investigation,” and there is no report of injury or damage due to the loss of both vehicles on Flight 9 of Starships. License,
The lift of Starship Flight 10 has been started from EDT (2330 GMT) at 7:30 am during a launch window during a launch window. Spacex will stream the mission live on its website, as well as Account on XSpace.com will also broadcast on our homepage starting about 30 minutes before the lift.
