SpaceX Starship prepares for 10th test flight after back-to-back explosions

SpaceX is set to launch the 10th test flight of its Starship rocket on Sunday — after its last three launches ended with the spacecraft exploding in the air.

The 400-foot-tall Starship rocket is set to blast off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas at 7:30 pm EST, more than two months after the spacecraft exploded into an enormous fireball during a routine test.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cleared the way for Sunday’s test to proceed following a probe of the ninth launch, which saw the Starship rocket fail to deploy dummy satellites and burn up as it plunged back toward Earth’s atmosphere. 

SpaceX officials said they identified the cause of the issue as a failure on the main fuel tank, which has since been addressed for Sunday’s blast off.

Officials also investigated the June 18 explosion at Starbase, which was linked to an issue with the rocket’s payload bay section that caused “propellant mixing and ignition.”

“Every lesson learned, through both flight and ground testing, continues to feed directly into designs for the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy,” the company said in a statement.

Like with all other previous test flights, Sunday’s mission will be streamed live on X.

If everything proceeds smoothly, Sunday’s launch would mark Starship’s first successful launch of the year after suffering repeated setbacks.

Prior to the failure of the ninth launch in May, the company saw its Starship rockets explode over the Atlantic Ocean during its seventh and eighth flights in January and March, respectively.

Despite the failures, the ninth test did see the first successful reuse of the Super Heavy booster rocket, marking progress for CEO Elon Musk’s ambition to create a fully reusable rocket system.

Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, saving SpaceX significantly on cost and resources, which would aid the company in reaching its ultimate goal of pioneering travel to the Moon and Mars.

SpaceX has been tapped to handle NASA’s upcoming Artemis 3 mission to return to the Moon in 2027, with Musk eyeing his own launch for Mars come 2026 when Earth and the red planet are at their closest orbit.