Overview

• The ninth orbital test flight achieved spaceflight but an upper stage fuel leak caused an uncontrolled re-entry and explosion above the Indian Ocean.
• A failure to open the side hatch prevented deployment of eight mock Starlink satellites intended to simulate commercial payload delivery.
• Engineers removed select thermal protection tiles to measure structure resilience, gathering high-temperature data before the vehicle disintegrated.
• The FAA has approved increasing Starship launches from five to 25 annually and Elon Musk has pledged roughly one test every three to four weeks.
• SpaceX’s iterative prototype approach aims to refine full reusability for NASA’s Artemis lunar missions and Elon Musk’s long-term plan to colonize Mars.