SpaceX's Super Heavy booster for Starship Flight 9 failed to land successfully in the water, and the firm lost the rocket as it attempted to restart its engines for the landing burn. The booster was the first in the program's history to be reflown, and SpaceX had set ambitious test objectives for the 232-feet-tall rocket. These had included shutting down one engine during a landing burn and flying it at a higher angle of attack to test fuel efficiency and eventually increase its range. However, the troublesome second-generation upper-stage Starship spacecraft successfully separated from the booster and managed to shut down its engines after reaching its suborbital trajectory.
SpaceX had set ambitious test objectives for the Super Heavy booster for today's test flight. The firm intended to test the rocket to its endurance limit before a splashdown. The objectives included a slight change to the stage separation profile, shutting down a single Raptor engine during a landing burn to test a backup engine and flying the rocket at a higher angle of attack.
Among these objectives, SpaceX successfully tweaked the stage separation profile as the rocket flawlessly separated from the upper-stage spacecraft. However, the booster's engines did not reignite for a landing burn after having successfully lit up for a boostback burn. The rocket was lost during its landing burn after all of its engines successfully fired for liftoff.
However, while the Super Heavy exploded during its landing attempt, the second-generation upper-stage Starship spacecraft performed flawlessly. Not only did all of the rocket's engines successfully ignite after stage separation but all of them also successfully shut down as the ship entered its suborbital trajectory.
Yet, while the engines performed successfully, it failed to deploy the Starlink satellite simulators and control its orientation during reentry. The latter malfunction stemmed from leaks in the ship's tanks, and it prevented SpaceX from conducting a controlled ship reentry. Controlled reentry was key to evaluating the ship's heatshield as SpaceX flew it with 100 missing heatshield tiles to test key regions.
The ship was also due to perform an in-space engine ignition and evaluate hardware for an eventual launch tower catch. However, as it failed its controlled reentry, the future of the ship's recovery continues to be uncertain. Ahead of Starship Flight 7 in January, Elon Musk had speculated that if SpaceX managed to successfully splash down consecutive Starships in the water, then the firm might attempt to catch the rocket with the launch tower.
However, as the ship failed to splash down for the third consecutive time, its future is uncertain despite an eventual reentry today, which headed to the same trajectory after suborbital injection. Unlike the previous generation upper-stage ship, SpaceX is yet to complete a full mission profile with its new ship. This spacecraft features several upgrades, including larger tanks and new heatshield tiles.
Since SpaceX is yet to complete a mission profile with the rocket, the pressure on the firm to deliver with the rocket is growing as it has to demonstrate the ship's in-space propellant transfer to NASA as part of the Artemis lunar landing missions.