SpaceX prepares for ninth Starship test flight

The upcoming test will be closely watched because of Starship’s two previous failures. Tuesday’s flight will be the first to use a Super Heavy booster that flew on a previous mission and returned to Earth.

The company has said it intends for Starship to be a fully reusable system. On three previous test flights, SpaceX successfully pulled off a dramatic “catch” maneuver that involved the Super Heavy booster returning to its launch site and settling onto the launch tower’s robotic arms.

Starship’s last flight in early March was cut short after mission controllers lost contact with the upper-stage vehicle roughly nine minutes after liftoff.

Videos later emerged from Florida and the Caribbean showing a ball of smoke overhead and pieces of debris streaking across the sky. Airports across Florida ordered tempor ground stops due to “space launch debris.”

A separate test mission on Jan. 16 also resulted in an explosion of the upper-stage vehicle over the Caribbean. Dust and small bits of debris fell over parts of Turks and Caicos, but local authorities said there were no injuries or major damage to property.

The Federal Aviation Administration oversaw investigations after both accidents and announced last week when it cleared Starship to fly again that the agency would expand hazard zones along the rocket’s flight path based on updated safety requirements.

Previous Starship flights had hazard zones — areas where boats and air traffic must not enter — that extended 885 nautical miles. Tuesday’s mission, however, will see those zones grow to 1,600 nautical miles, covering land and water east of the South Texas launch site, through the Straits of Florida and including the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos.

For the latest test flight, SpaceX said it will experiment with several “off-nominal scenarios” with the Super Heavy booster. As a result, the first stage will not return to the launch site for the catch maneuver, according to the company.

If it reaches orbit, the upper-stage vehicle will attempt to deploy eight simulated Starlink satellites that will eventually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Mission controllers will also try to relight one of the spacecraft’s Raptor engines while in space.

Musk intends for Starship to be used for future missions to Mars, but SpaceX officials have said the company will likely conduct hundreds of test missions before any humans fly aboard the next-generation rocket.