Overview

• SpaceX targets Sunday, Aug. 24 at 7:30 p.m. ET for the tenth Starship test flight from Starbase in South Texas.
• The FAA said it oversaw and accepted SpaceX’s investigations into recent mishaps and approved the next launch.
• SpaceX traced May 27 failures to a Super Heavy fuel transfer tube rupture and an upper-stage pressurization diffuser issue, and the June test-stand blast to an undetected damaged nitrogen COPV.
• Flight 10 will trial multiple Super Heavy landing-burn maneuvers, a deliberate engine-redundancy test during descent, a flip and boostback toward a splashdown in the Gulf of America, a single Raptor relight on the upper stage, deployment of eight Starlink simulators, and heat-shield tile experiments.
• SpaceX says it has implemented hardware and operational changes in line with its iterative test approach, as MIT’s Olivier de Weck voices doubts focused on the Starship upper stage.