After scrubbing a launch attempt on Monday, March 3, and destacking Ship 34 to address issues with the ship and booster, SpaceX launched Starship on its eighth flight test on Thursday, March 6. Booster 15 and Ship 34 lifted off at 5:30 PM CST (23:30 UTC) from SpaceX’s Starbase launch and production facility in south Texas.
Following a nominal first stage ascent and stage separation, Ship 34 ignited its six Raptor engines while Booster 15 returned to the launch site, where it was successfully caught by the launch tower “chopstick” catch arms. Moments later, however, Ship 34 lost attitude control and began to tumble, resulting in its destruction and reentry over the Atlantic.
Flight 8
Following liftoff, Booster 15 and Ship 34 ascended through the south Texas skies with all 33 Raptor engines firing. The hot staging sequence was successfully performed, with Ship 34 igniting its three sea-level and three vacuum-optimized Raptor engines. Booster 15 turned around to perform its boostback burn, with only 11 out of 13 engines igniting. Following boostback burn shutdown, the “go” for catch was given.
For the Flight 8 booster catch landing profile, Booster 15 approached the launch tower with less horizontal motion than previous catch attempts. With this new catch profile, the booster engine exhaust does not contact the launch mount or the launch tower, highlighting how SpaceX is optimizing flight profiles to protect ground equipment.
Starship Flight 8 may not have met all of SpaceX's planned objectives, but the catch of Booster 15 was a sight to behold!
📸 – @NASASpaceflight pic.twitter.com/N712VVh7Nq— D Wise (@dwisecinema) March 7, 2025
Ship 34 would continue its ascent burn during the booster catch with no visible issues. However, Ship 34 would ultimately suffer the same fate as Ship 33 on Flight 7, as the ship would suddenly lose power on four of its six Raptor engines, including the three, gimbaling sea-level Raptor engines. The loss of the sea-level Raptors meant Ship 34 no longer had attitude control, and the ship subsequently began to tumble until it disintegrated and reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Communications with Ship 34 ceased at T+9:30 minutes into the flight.
In-flight cameras from SpaceX showed that Ship 34 suffered a leak near the center sea-level engines, which resulted in a rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD) of one of the vacuum-optimized Raptors, leading to the loss of the center three engines. The debris field generated from Ship 34’s reentry caused multiple aircraft to divert and move away from the debris area.
Due to the Ship 34 anomaly, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has required SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation before returning to Starship to flight. SpaceX now has both Flight 7 and Flight 8’s mishap investigations open.
Expected. The @FAANews is requiring a mishap investigation into Flight 8 of Starship. pic.twitter.com/TG6zKS2pwC
— Adrian Beil (@BCCarCounters) March 7, 2025
Flight 7
Starship Flight 7 lifted off on Jan. 16, 2025, and was the first flight of a Block 2 Starship. Booster 14 flew a nearly perfect mission with the only blemish being an engine not reigniting on the boostback burn. As a testament to the resilience of SpaceX’s flight computers, however, the engine reignited for the landing burn. The failure to ignite during the boostback burn was later attributed to lower power in the engine igniter.
Booster 14 then completed its landing and was caught by Tower A. Since becoming the second booster to be caught by a tower, Booster 14 has been inside Mega Bay 1 undergoing refurbishment.
Booster 14 Landing Burn (Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)
Ship 33, however, suffered an anomaly that led to the loss of the vehicle during its ascent burn. This caused the ship to break apart in flight and pieces were scattered across the Atlantic Ocean near the Turks and Caicos Islands.
According to SpaceX, this failure was due to a leak above the engine bay shielding and below the aft dome, referred to as the “attic.” Harmonic oscillations caused this leak, likely from engine and propellant lines.
These uncontrolled powerful vibrations likely broke some propellant lines, leading to the leak. The oscillations are possibly due to changing the amount of transfer tubes within the ship from one to four, with each Raptor Vacuum now having its own transfer tube. This would help explain the long duration static fire that Ship 34 completed prior to Flight 8.
During that long duration static fire, SpaceX tested different thrust and flow levels through the propellant lines to find the setting that caused the harmonic oscillations. The loss of Ship 33 was a setback in the program, but SpaceX traditionally finds a way to come up with a solution and get back to flying in short order, hence the fast return-to-flight with Flight 8.Â
Flight 7 in flight. (Credit: BocaChicaGal for NSF)
Mission objectives, trajectory, regulatory processes
The trajectory for Flight 8 was the same as Flight 7’s, with a larger Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) hazard zone due to the anomaly with Ship 33. Flight 8 launched from Orbital Launch Pad A (OLP-A) and targeted a ship splashdown in the Indian Ocean as with the previous five flights. Following stage separation, the booster returned to the launch site for the fourth catch attempt. The successful catch of Booster 15 means SpaceX has succeeded in three out of four booster catch attempts.
The mission objectives for Flight 8 were the same as those for Flight 7. The primary objective was to thoroughly test the Block 2 ship design by completing an in-space Raptor engine re-ignition, taking tiles off in locations across the vehicle to test aerodynamic and heating loads, and testing new active-cooled and metal tiles for future heat shield designs. Unfortunately, however, Ship 34’s anomaly did not allow for any of these tests to be carried out.
SpaceX also needed to test new systems onboard Block 2 that didn’t get tested with Ship 33 due to its anomaly. Lastly, this flight was expected to test the non-structural catch pins bolted onto the ship, which will be used to catch the ship with the launch tower during future flights. These pins have a slightly different design than what is currently on the booster. The pins that would go into the landing rail are smaller, and both are covered in heat shield tiles to help survive reentry.Â
Flight 8 timeline. (Credit: SpaceX)
Booster 15’s objectives were to perform a successful liftoff, ascent, and catch, all of which succeeded. SpaceX intends to reuse Super Heavy boosters on future flights to improve Starship’s flight cadence in 2025.
The FAA recently released a statement that SpaceX has completed a comprehensive safety review and can resume Starship flight operations. At the same time, the mishap investigation into the Flight 7 ship anomaly was still open. The FAA issued a license modification and the flight sign-off for Flight 8 and all future flights. With the Flight 8 anomaly, however, a new license modification will likely be needed following the completion of the Flight 7 and Flight 8 mishap investigations.
From a regulatory standpoint, SpaceX is go for launch for Flight 8. pic.twitter.com/wvHsddwLP1
— Adrian Beil (@BCCarCounters) February 28, 2025
The first part of the license modification allowed for the installation of the flight termination system in the vehicle integration bays rather than at the start of preflight operations. With this modification, the start of preflight operations was stated as starting with the go/no-go poll before propellant loading.
Other modifications involve later Starship flights. These new modifications authorized Starship to launch to orbit. However, it did not authorize Starship to reenter from orbit. This modification will likely be added to the license once SpaceX proves Block 2’s heat shield and reentry systems during a future flight.Â
Booster 15 and Ship 34
Ship 34 likely had many internal changes due to the loss of Ship 33. These changes could have involved improvements to the propellant lines going directly to the engines and software changes to prevent harmonic oscillation from occurring again. Regarding exterior changes, there were extra vents in the aft section of the ship to negate the issues encountered on Ship 33 during Flight 7.
Booster 15 on OLP-A ahead of Flight 8. (Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)
SpaceX has stated that Booster 15 features a more powerful flight computer and improved power and network distribution, such as an improved raceway and integrated smart batteries. These improvements from in-flight data move SpaceX toward the debut of the first Block 2 booster.
Booster 15 was rolled out to the launch site on Feb. 25 and subsequently completed final checkouts on OLP-A. Ship 34 didn’t roll to the pad until March 2, just 31 hours and 30 mins before the first launch attempt.
Flight 9
With the Ship 34 anomaly on Flight 8, Flight 9 will likely be another test of the Block 2 Starship design, similar to the previous two flights. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) license for Flight 9 before Flight 8, SpaceX could have returned the ship to the launch site for a catch attempt.
Flight 9 is expected to fly with Ship 35 and Booster 14-2, marking the first reflight of a Super Heavy booster. Flight 8’s ship failure means that a ship catch attempt will almost certainly come on a later flight.Â
(Lead image: Booster 15 Landing. Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)
