{"id":101385,"date":"2025-08-22T08:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T08:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/101385\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T08:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T08:24:07","slug":"spacex-starship-prepares-for-10th-test-flight-after-back-to-back-explosions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/101385\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX Starship prepares for 10th test flight after back-to-back explosions"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX is set to launch the 10th test flight of its Starship rocket on Sunday \u2014 after its last three launches ended with the spacecraft exploding <\/a>in the air. <\/p>\n

The 400-foot-tall Starship rocket is set to blast off from\u00a0SpaceX\u2019s Starbase facility\u00a0in Texas at 7:30 pm EST, more than two months after the spacecraft exploded into an enormous fireball<\/a> during a routine test. <\/p>\n

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cleared the way for Sunday\u2019s test to proceed following a probe of the ninth launch, which saw the Starship rocket fail to deploy dummy satellites\u00a0and burn up as it plunged<\/a> back toward Earth\u2019s atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SpaceX is set to launch its next Starship rocket on Sunday, hoping to mark the first successful mission of 2025. REUTERS<\/p>\n

The last three flights this year have resulted in the spacecraft\u2019s explosion, two which were recorded over the Caribbean. via REUTERS<\/p>\n

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\u2019s blast off. <\/p>\n

Officials also investigated the June 18 explosion at Starbase, which was linked to an issue with the rocket\u2019s payload bay section that caused \u201cpropellant mixing and ignition.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery lesson learned, through both flight and ground testing, continues to feed directly into designs for the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Like with all other previous test flights, Sunday\u2019s mission will be streamed live on X. <\/p>\n

The ninth test launch appeared to be a success early on, but the rocket was burned up and destroyed upon re-entry. SpaceX<\/p>\n

If everything proceeds smoothly, Sunday\u2019s launch would mark Starship\u2019s first successful launch of the year after suffering repeated setbacks. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Despite the failures, the ninth test did see the first successful reuse of the Super Heavy booster rocket, marking progress for CEO Elon Musk\u2019s ambition to create a fully reusable rocket system. <\/p>\n

The latest test will be held at SpaceX\u2019s Starbase facility, in Texas. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has been tapped to handle NASA\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX is set to launch the 10th test flight of its Starship rocket on Sunday \u2014 after its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[11,6425,79,193,1513,1022,194],"class_list":["post-101385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-elon-musk","tag-rockets","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-texas","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}