The ninth flight test of the rocket has failed Starship Of Spacexthe highest and most powerful pitcher in the world with his 120 meterstaken off tonight from Starbase In Texas, whose two stadiums exploded one above the Gulf of Mexico and one above the Indian Ocean to approximately 45 minutes from launch. This is the third consecutive break for the company led by Elon Muskwho said “now we will launch one every three weeks”.
The flight saw the Booster as protagonists Super Heavy – the first already used in a previous test – and the spacecraft Shipto the third test in its new version Block 2. The attention of Spacex engineers and spatial exploration enthusiasts from all over the world was paid to the latter.
This break, which follows that of January (7th flight) and that of March (8th flight), confirms that the progress of the Starship program have suffered one setback Which is putting Spacex in difficulty above all given the need for a ship working for the future human wing with the Artemis program of NASA, already postponed due to technical difficulties in the realization of the lunar capsule.
How the ninth flight of Starship went: the goals and what went wrong
The super heavy booster used for tonight test was the first reused From Spacex for Starship. Also for this reason the engineers had decided to test its structural limitsespecially in the return phase, establishing a more “aggressive” flight profile than previous tests. In fact, a landing with capture by the mechanical arms of the tower Mechazillaas happened with the historic Quinto Test in October 2024.
Everything went almost nominally until the landing phase, when the booster is exploded to the reacing of the engines. No return “soft” then for the first super Heavy used for the second time. But this is not the real failure of the ninth Starship test: the return was in fact deliberately at high risk And an explosion in flight was abundantly preventive.
The greatest displeasure came from the Ship spacecraft, which was the crucial element of this test. The new generation Block 2 of this spacecraft, in fact, is proving to be revealed problem: since it is tested, in fact, various technical problems have afflicted the spacecraft and for this reason they never been able to test it thermal shield and the wings of the new version of the ship. One of the objectives of the tonight test was in fact understand if these problems had been solved and perform these critical tests in operating conditions. For the ship you wanted to test the release of loads that simulated satellites Starlinkas well as the lighting of engines in space.
Unfortunately, however, none of this happened tonight. A malfunction has prevented the opening of the tailgate for the release of Starlink simulators. Also, the ship has not managed to maintain its structurea malfunction that led to the cancellation of the engines of the engines. Without control capacity on its set -up, the Ship disintegrated in flight about 60 km of altitude above the ocean, well before reaching the fooling phase.
Here you can see the live broadcast in full:
The difficulties of Starship and possible delays for the wing
What does this failure mean? On the one hand, Spacex’s philosophy has always been of the type “Try, Fallisci, CONSUTI”: tested in real conditions made “low cost” prototypes to immediately identify problems or shortcomings, resolve and progress so quickly. In this perspective, however, a failure remains an opportunity for collect precious data to improve prototypes and progress.
It is a drastically different approach from that adopted by government space agencies such as NASA, which therefore must be evaluated with different criteria, also because it has always worked very well for Spacex, efficient in learning from its mistakes. Just think that the first rocket with reusable booster, the Falcon 9 Made by Spacex, he requested 30 attempts before arriving at the vertical return necessary for reuse; Starship, on the other hand, only succeeded in the 5th attempt. Clearly the Elon Musk company is able to build on the results – positive and negative – obtained previously.
However, the Starship program is located at third consecutive full failure And this indicates evident difficulties in the development of the rocket. We remember that it is a very early time: such a powerful rocket, characterized by a Absolutely unpublished innovationwhich must be completely reusable, had never been developed before in history. It is normal that working on a technology that first did not exist involves failures, but it is equally undeniable that after the promising results of the first tests the Starship development is currently in a partial stall in which it is not clear how to solve the problems that affectionate the ship.
A spacecraft that – we remember – must be used in a modified version like Lunar descent form For the astronauts of the mission Artemis III of NASA who intends to bring human beings back to the moon. A possible delay in the development of the Ship could therefore be added to those already announced by the American space agency for the development of the new human lunar program.
