SpaceX’s Starship rocket is grounded until the company determines what went wrong during the vehicle’s latest test flight on Tuesday.
The FAA will require SpaceX to complete a mishap investigation into the largest rocket to ever fly, which for the third time this year “did not complete its launch or reentry as planned,” the agency said Friday.
The announcement was not unexpected, as similar circumstances have grounded Starship in the past. But it coincides with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s announcement of the company’s grand vision for Mars, including a “50/50 chance” of landing on the Red Planet in November or December 2026. That will require more frequent test flights.
“Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks,” Musk promised in a postlaunch update on social media platform X.
What Goes Up, Should Come Down
Starship’s ninth test flight marked the first use of a previously flown Super Heavy booster, which was caught back at the launchpad in January and refurbished for the mission. SpaceX has caught the booster three times but has yet to catch Starship itself—a capability Musk described to news website Ars Technica as the “holy grail of rocketry.” Reusing both stages would allow the company to significantly reduce the cost and time to launch.
Recent test flights have set out to gather data on Starship’s reentry performance to enable a future catch. But the rocket has not reached that stage since a successful Flight 6 in November.
Test flights in January and March were cut short during Starship’s ascent burn due to engine troubles. Both times the rocket exploded and disrupted air travel, but SpaceX attributed the mishaps to different causes. It investigated both incidents and made enhancements to prevent a similar outcome. They appear to have worked, as the rocket on Tuesday reached orbit for the first time in 2025.
“Need to look at data to confirm all fixes from flight 8 worked as expected but all evidence points to a new failure mode,” SpaceX propulsion engineer Shana Diez wrote on X.
Musk in his post speculated that “leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase,” which resulted in loss of attitude control. Starship ultimately broke apart over the Indian Ocean and failed to deliver coveted reentry data. According to the FAA, all debris fell in a preplanned hazard area, and no injuries or property damage were reported.
Super Heavy, meanwhile, exploded as it headed for a planned splashdown. That prompted the FAA to activate a debris response area—like it did during Flights 7 and 8—“out of an abundance of caution,” it said. One flight was diverted and another held for 24 minutes, but there were no departure delays.
Though both stages were lost, the FAA will not require SpaceX to investigate Super Heavy because the mishap was covered by test induced damage exceptions added to its launch license in November. Similar exceptions exist for Starship—but the loss of the vehicle is not one of them.
More Work To Do
Starship has had a tumultuous start to 2025—a year in which SpaceX hopes to launch as many as 25 times after receiving the FAA greenlight to increase its cadence.
The company’s shortest turnaround between test flights was just over one month, between Flights 5 and 6 in 2024. But required investigations extend that timeline. About two months separated each of the past three test flights—even with the FAA authorizing the previous two before SpaceX wrapped up its investigations.
The delays could have a ripple effect on SpaceX’s ambitions for the moon—and Mars, as Musk expounded on this week.
The company is under contract to land four NASA astronauts on the moon in mid-2027 using a Starship human landing system (HLS). Before then, it will need to hit several ambitious targets—including at least eight flights of a Starship tanker variant to stock an orbital fuel depot, where the HLS will stop on its way to the moon.
Musk would like to see that happen even earlier so SpaceX can take advantage of a late 2026 window—which opens just once every two years—to fly to Mars. The SpaceX CEO on Thursday said the first Mars mission would carry a crew of Tesla robots, with subsequent Starships flying humans on the seven-to-nine-month journey. Ultimately, Musk envisions launching 2,000 Starships each window, or as many as 10 per day, to create a “self-sufficient city” on Mars, per SpaceX’s website.
“Each launch is about learning more and more about what’s needed to make life multiplanetary and to improve Starship to the point where it can be taking, ultimately, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to Mars,” Musk said.
The SpaceX boss predicted the next iteration of Starship, Version 3, will debut later this year and be capable of reaching Mars. Musk has said that “stopping at the moon simply slows down getting to Mars,” suggesting the latter is his bigger priority.
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