If SpaceX can fly Starship again next month, the company may be able to maintain its goals for the program this year. SpaceX has no shortage of hardware ready or almost ready to go. Multiple Starships and Super Heavy rockets are in preparation for future test flights at the company’s Starbase launch facility near Brownsville, Texas.
But schedules often slip in the launch business, and the FAA could ground Starship until SpaceX completes a formal investigation into the mishap. The federal regulator is responsible for ensuring public safety in commercial space launches. A spokesperson told Ars Thursday night that the FAA is evaluating the Starship anomaly and will provide a statement when officials know more.
A setback, sure, but is this a big deal?
In the hours after Thursday’s test flight, Musk took to his social media platform to share and comment on several videos of Starship debris returning to Earth. SpaceX has always embraced failures as learning opportunities, and the company culture focuses on rapid iteration of designs: build, test, break, repair.
This launch debuted a more advanced and slightly taller version of Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, with larger fuel tanks, a new avionics system, and redesigned power lines that flow methane and liquid oxygen to the six engines. Ship Raptor. SpaceX officials did not say whether any of these changes could have caused the problem at Thursday’s launch.
SpaceX officials have repeatedly and carefully set expectations for each Starship test flight. The rocket is commonly referred to as experimental, and the primary goal of the rocket’s early demonstration missions is to collect data on the vehicle’s performance. What works and what doesn’t work?
Still, the result of Thursday’s test flight is a clear disappointment for SpaceX. This was the seventh test flight of SpaceX’s massive rocket, and the first time Starship failed to complete its launch sequence since the second flight in November 2023. Until now, SpaceX has made steady progress, with each Starship flight achieving more milestones than the previous one.
On the first flight in April 2023, the rocket lost control just over two minutes after liftoff, and the power of the booster’s 33 motors shook the ground and shattered the concrete foundation beneath the launch pad. Seven months later, on Flight 2, the rocket managed eight minutes before failing. On that mission, Starship failed at roughly the same point in its ascent, just before the shutdown of the vehicle’s six methane-fueled Raptor engines.
At the time, a handful of photos and images from the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico showed debris in the sky after Starship activated its self-destruct mechanism due to an onboard fire caused by a liquid oxygen propellant spill. But that flight occurred in the morning, with bright sunlight along the craft’s flight path.
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