Update on SpaceX Starship Launch

Latest Developments

Update: May 27, 8:25 p.m. ET

Announcers on the SpaceX broadcast confirmed that Starship will break apart above the Indian Ocean and crash into the planned landing zone. The Super Heavy booster was indeed lost during the mission.

Update: May 27, 8:18 p.m. ET

SpaceX anticipates the complete loss of Starship due to an uncontrolled reentry. The spacecraft is expected to crash into the Indian Ocean, with parts of the vehicle potentially scattering across the area.

Update: May 27, 8:13 p.m. ET

Approximately 30 minutes into the mission, SpaceX announced that Starship had entered an unrecoverable spin due to the loss of attitude control. The spacecraft, being suborbital, will undergo an atmospheric reentry, but it will be uncontrolled. Although SpaceX pushed Starship further than in the previous two tests, this latest flight cannot be considered a success.

Update: May 27, 8:02 p.m. ET

Starship launched from the Boca Chica launch mount a few minutes past 7:30 p.m. ET, following brief holds. All 33 Raptor engines were engaged, with the fully integrated rocket surviving Max-Q, hot staging, and stage separation. However, SpaceX lost telemetry with the Super Heavy booster and was unable to attempt a controlled landing. The booster is presumed lost. The upper stage, Ship, continued its journey and survived the trek to space, unlike the past two launches. SpaceX attempted to open the deployment doors at 7:54 p.m. but aborted the procedure when the doors failed to open fully.

Original Article

The world’s largest rocket, Starship, is preparing for its ninth flight after experiencing back-to-back anomalies. SpaceX is gearing up for liftoff on Tuesday, hoping the rocket will perform better this time around following several improvements since its last flight.

Launch Details

Starship is scheduled to launch on Tuesday, May 27, during a launch window that opens at 7:30 p.m. ET. The fully integrated rocket will take to the skies for its ninth test flight from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The launch will be streamed live on SpaceX’s website and through the company’s page on X.

Watch Starship’s ninth flight test → https://t.co/Gufroc2kUz https://t.co/NYF0ZMyeGp

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 23, 2025

You can tune in 30 minutes before the scheduled launch time for the live webcast. Additionally, you can watch the launch via third-party providers.

Reusability and Upcoming Launch

For its upcoming launch, SpaceX will utilize a Super Heavy booster that has flown before. The booster previously launched and landed during the rocket’s seventh test flight on January 16, and 29 of its 33 Raptor engines have flown before. This marks the first time SpaceX reuses a booster for its Starship rocket, a significant step toward reusability. Starship is a fully-reusable launch vehicle, requiring both its Super Heavy booster and the upper stage, known as Ship, to be caught mid-air by the 400-foot-tall Mechazilla tower.

Recent Failures and Improvements

SpaceX has made significant progress with Starship’s 232-foot-tall (71-meter) Super Heavy booster, successfully catching the booster during three out of four attempts. However, the rocket’s upper stage suffered glitches during the last two test flights. During Flight 7 in January, Starship’s upper stage experienced an engine problem, forcing an early shutdown and causing it to break apart and rain down rocket debris over Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean. Less than two months later, during Flight 8, the upper stage suffered another major failure, spinning uncontrollably before breaking apart a few moments after launch.

The failure prompted an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which conducted a safety review of the rocket. Last week, the FAA gave SpaceX the green light to launch Starship for its ninth test flight. SpaceX reported that it had identified the problem and made "several hardware changes" ahead of Tuesday’s liftoff. The company stated that one of the rocket’s engines failed to fire during the boostback burn, likely due to overheating of the engine’s ignition device. SpaceX added insulation to Starship’s engines this time around, hoping to avoid the same issue.

Objectives and Future Plans

During Tuesday’s flight, Super Heavy "will fly a variety of experiments aimed at generating data to improve performance and reliability on future boosters," SpaceX wrote. The rocket will also re-attempt objectives that it failed to meet during the last two test flights, including the deployment of payloads and "multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the vehicle to the launch site for catch," according to SpaceX.

SpaceX’s Starship is a crucial part of NASA’s planned return to the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program, which aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface in 2027. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is also betting on the company’s Starship rocket for his plan to land humans on Mars. Ahead of Tuesday’s launch, Musk will hold a company talk titled, "The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary," which will be live-streamed on X at 1 p.m. ET.