That didn’t fix the issue. As soon as once again, Starship’s engines cut off too early, and the rocket disintegrated before being up to Earth. SpaceX stated “an energetic event” in the aft part of Starship led to the loss of a number of Raptor engines, followed by a loss of mindset control and a loss of interactions with the ship.

The resemblances in between the 2 failures recommend a most likely style concern with the updated “Block 2” variation of Starship, which debuted in January and flew once again in March. Starship Block 2 is somewhat taller than the ship SpaceX utilized on the rocket’s very first 6 flights, with revamped flaps, enhanced batteries and avionics, and significantly, a brand-new fuel feed line system for the ship’s Raptor vacuum engines.

SpaceX has actually not launched the outcomes of the examination into the Flight 8 failure, and the FAA hasn’t yet provided a launch license for Flight 9. SpaceX hasn’t launched any details on the modifications it made to Starship for next week’s flight.

What we do learn about the Starship car for Flight 9– designated Ship 35– is that it took a couple of shots to finish a full-duration test-firing. SpaceX finished a single-engine fixed fire on April 30, imitating the reboot of a Raptor engine in area. On May 1, SpaceX terminated a six-engine test-firing before reaching its prepared 60-second period. Videos caught by media observing the test revealed a flash in the engine plume, and a minimum of one piece of particles was seen careening out of the flame trench listed below the ship.

SpaceX landing crew returned Ship 35 to the production website a number of miles away, possibly to change a harmed engine, before rolling Starship back to the test tower above the weekend for Monday’s effective engine shooting.

Now, the ship will head back to the Starbase develop website, where service technicians will make last preparations for Flight 9. These last jobs might consist of packing mock-up Starlink broadband satellites into the ship’s payload bay and touchups to the rocket’s heat guard.

These are 2 aspects of Starship that SpaceX engineers aspire to show on Flight 9, beyond simply repairing the issues from the last 2 objectives. Those failures avoided Starship from evaluating its satellite deployer and an updated heat guard created to much better endure scorching temperature levels as much as 2,600 ° Fahrenheit (1,430 ° Celsius) throughout reentry.