SpaceX megarocket gets farther in test than last two flights, but loses control on reentry to Earth

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage of SpaceX’s ninth test launch. Watch the highlights here.

People watch SpaceX's Starship launch from South Padre Island, Texas, on Tuesday.

Today’s flight did not go exactly as expected. And the fact that SpaceX lost contact with Starship and left it to spin out of control as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere is a strong indicator that federal regulators will require SpaceX to open an investigation into what went wrong.

That was the case after the last two mid-flight Starship mishaps in January and March.

Before the FAA gives SpaceX the go-ahead for another test flight, the agency typically requires SpaceX to file paperwork demonstrating the company understands the issue, has a plan to protect public safety, and either finish its own investigation or make the case for why the rocket is safe to launch again.

For his part, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that he expects to get regulatory approval at a faster rate going forward.

“Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks,” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns.

Musk has captured outsized attention for his participation in politics as of late, and his deep ties to the Trump administration and its government reform initiatives have elicited stark criticisms about conflicts of interest.

But Musk has said he’s now taking a step back from politics and is perhaps refocusing on SpaceX.

Broadly speaking, Starship needs to achieve some of the testing milestones it has chased during the past few test flights but hasn’t quite reached, including relighting its engine in space and testing out how it will deploy satellites.

From there, SpaceX may be able to move on to loftier goals, such as figuring out how to recover and refly the upper Starship spacecraft, refuel the vehicle with a Starship tanker once it reaches orbit, and generally work to hash out how the vehicle might one day support missions to deliver cargo or humans to deep space.

The US Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches like SpaceX’s Starship test flights, just issued a statement about tonight’s mission.

“The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX Starship Flight 9 mission that launched on Tuesday, May 27, from Starbase, Texas, and is actively working with SpaceX on the event,” the statement reads. “There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property at this time.”

CNN reached out to the FAA, inquiring how air traffic might have been affected by Starship’s uncontrolled descent back to Earth. SpaceX employees on the webcast for the test flight noted that a large area would need be cleared in the Indian Ocean to accommodate the vehicle’s unpredictable return.

The federal agency said it did not have any immediate details on impacts to air travel.

The SpaceX Starship rocket launches from Starbase, Texas, as seen from South Padre Island on Tuesday.

SpaceX employs a unique approach to rocket design and testing. Engineers don’t go into test flights expecting perfection, so the company does not always consider explosive mishaps “failures,” per se.

Here are a few points to know about SpaceX, its approach to Starship, and how these test flights affect the public.

Was today’s test flight a success?

SpaceX routinely frames test flights as successful feats of research. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary,” the company said in a tweet.

But the Starship spacecraft failed to reach several key testing milestones, such as attempting to deploy mock satellites and relighting its engine in space.

Who pays for these missions?

For the most part, SpaceX is footing the bill. Though NASA has awarded SpaceX up to about $4 billion in contracts for Starship to one day land astronauts on the moon, that money is handed out in batches as the company achieves various milestones.

Musk has said each Starship test flight costs about $50 million to $100 million.

Are these explosions dangerous?

So far, none of the failed Starship missions have led to reports of bodily harm or injury. But after a January explosion, a piece of Starship debris struck a car in South Caicos, causing minor damage, according to the FAA.

It’s not clear where exactly Starship debris may have landed after today’s flight. The FAA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a January statement to CNN, the FAA said that it requires SpaceX to map out “hazard areas sufficient to ensure that the probability of casualty to a member of the public on land or on board a maritime vessel does not exceed one in one million.”

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payment platform company Shift4, has long had close ties to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. He’s twice paid SpaceX to fly private missions to orbit, and he was a crew member on both of those trips.

Isaacman is also President Donald Trump’s pick to run NASA. And he was approved by the Senate Commerce Committee, though his appointment is still awaiting confirmation by the full Senate.

Isaacman took to X, the social media platform owned by Musk, to share his thoughts on today’s test flight.

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk just weighed in with his recap of today’s test flight, posting on his social media platform, X, “Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight!”

He added that Starship did not lose a significant number of heat shield tiles, which are designed to protect the spacecraft as it heads back to Earth, as it flew toward space on ascent.

But Starship did not ultimately make it to reentry, when those heat shield tiles are crucial.

“Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review,” Musk noted.

Musk also said he hopes SpaceX will rapidly increase the number of Starship test flights it launches, hoping the next three missions will occur three to four weeks after one another.

So far in 2025, SpaceX has carried out two other test flights — one in January and one in March. Both ended with Starship exploding less than 10 minutes into the mission.

SpaceX’s Starship soared through some signficant milestones. But it also failed to hit some key test objectives. Here’s a quick look back at what happened:

SpaceX just wrapped up the live coverage of today’s Starship test flight.

Spokesperson Dan Huot signed off with remarks reminiscent of how SpaceX frames every test flight that does not go exactly according to plan — emphasizing that engineers aim to learn from failure.

“We are trying to do something that is impossibly hard, and it’s not always not going to reach it in a straight line,” Huot said. “We said there’s going to be bumps. There’s going to be turns. But seeing that ship in space today was a hell of a moment for us.”

It’s not clear where Starship landed or how the vehicle fared during the jarring process of reentering Earth’s atmosphere.

The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the spacecraft’s uncontrolled return to Earth may have affected commercial air travel.

Any object that plunges back toward Earth’s thick atmosphere while traveling at roughly 20 times the speed of sound will experience some itense physics.

“We do expect the vehicle to see about 1400 degrees Celsius,” SpaceX’s Jessie Anderson said.

That’s about 2,552 degrees Fahrenheit.

The pressure and friction cause that intense buildup of heat. Often, objects that undergo an uncontrolled fall back to Earth from space while traveling at such speeds are torn to shreds. That likely means that Starship will break apart, with the pieces falling into the ocean.

SpaceX no longer has contact with the vehicle, Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesperson, confirmed just before 8:30 pm ET.

SpaceX has made the decision to begin “passivating” the vehicle, said SpaceX’s Dan Huot.

That means “we’re essentially venting all of the remaining propellant overboard, and it’s going to make an uncontrolled reentry,” Huot said.

To ensure safety, airspace regulators will need to “clear a tremendous amount of space out in the Indian Ocean.”

“We understand that there are always risks, essentially, with these flight tests, with the hardware, but we don’t really accept any compromise when it comes to protecting people,” Huot said of the precautions.

SpaceX has lost control of the Starship vehicle, and SpaceX’s Dan Huot confirmed the company will no longer attempt to reignite the spacecraft’s engines.

That marks the second key test objective that Starship won’t reach on this mission. Earlier, Starship failed to fully open its side cargo hatch to deploy mock satellites.

“We’ll still get as much data as we can. We’re still getting live telemetry, live views … the entire time, and will continue to stick with ship as it continues on,” Huot said.

A view from one of the on board cameras after Starship lost attitude control.

SpaceX’s Dan Huot just announced that Starship has lost attitude control. That means the vehicle won’t be able to precisely orient itself for reentry, or the stage of flight in which the vehicle dives back into the planet’s thick inner atmosphere.

That’s not good news for the ship’s survival odds.

The spacecraft “did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside of Starship,” Huot said of what caused the loss of control. “This lowers the chances for it to be a controlled reentry.”

No matter what, the vehicle is still expected to fall back and land in the ocean shortly. Starship’s flight path will not allow it to stay in space for long.

A view inside Starship's cargo bay.

SpaceX’s Dan Huot said a hatch on the side of Starship was not able to fully open, so the vehicle cannot deploy a set of dummy satellites carried along on the flight.

The spacecraft was supposed to open the hatch and eject eight fake payloads meant to replicate SpaceX’s next generation of internet-beaming Starlink satellites. The goal was to test out how the Starship might one day deploy functional cargo into orbit.

SpaceX had hoped to test out this feature on two prior flights in January and March. Those attempts were thwarted because Starship exploded minutes into its flight.

Huot emphasized that, although Starship didn’t deploy its dummy satellites today, the primary mission is still ongoing.

“Obviously this is a test we want to be able to do before we’re deploying full-on Starlinks. But the real focus for this, now that we are in space, is getting to that reentry that is the most critical phase of Starship that we still have to prove out,” Huot said.

Reentry refers to the stage of flight in which Starship exits the void of space and dives back into Earth’s thick inner atmosphere while still traveling near orbital speeds. Currently, the vehicle is moving at about 26,300 kilometers per hour (16,300 miles per hour).

A view of Starship from an onboard camera on Tuesday.

Starship is making huge strides, and it’s now coasting safely through space.

But there are significant test milestones still ahead. The vehicle will attempt to deploy mock satellites in just a few minutes.

Starship will also attempt to relight its engines about 40 minutes into today’s flight.

Finally, the vehicle will eventually have to dive back into Earth’s thick inner atmosphere. That’s a rough task for any spacecraft. And this Starship has a stripped-down heat shield. SpaceX removed some tiles from the vehicle’s exterior on purpose in the name of “stress testing.”

That means the vehicle may not survive the trip down to the Indian Ocean.

The earth can be seen past Starship's engines on Tuesday.

Cheers rang out from SpaceX employees as mission control announced that Starship had shut off all six of its engines, and confirmed the vehicle is on its designated flight path.

That marks a big step forward for Starship. The vehicle is already farther into its mission than it traveled on two prior flight tests this year.

The version of Starship flying today is also different from the vehicles that achieved as-expected test flight results in 2024. This vehicle is larger and boasts bigger fuel tanks along with numerous other small upgrades.

The Super Heavy rocket booster has done its job for this mission, and, as expected, it completed a hard landing in the ocean.

SpaceX put the booster through its paces. Only 13 engines were reignited just before landing. That included just two of the vehicle’s three center engines, an intentional malfunction meant to show engineers how the vehicle will behave in less-than-ideal situations.

Even before attempting this landing maneuver, SpaceX did not expect a super-controlled ending. And SpaceX’s Dan Huot said SpaceX lost contact with the vehicle shortly before touchdown and confirmed the Super Heavy had met its “demise.”

“We’ve done this in computer modeling. It shows that sometimes the control isn’t great, but only one way to really prove it out and that’s to get real world data,” Huot said.

A view of Starship's engines after launch on Tuesday.

SpaceX confirmed Starship’s six engines are firing as planned. Meanwhile, the Super Heavy booster made a successful flip maneuver and is now moving through several testing milestones as it hashes out a more efficient way to orient itself for landing.

The booster will splash down in the ocean rather than attempting a landing back at the launch site as SpaceX has done with the past several test flights.

SpaceX spokesperson Chris Gebhardt said during the livestream that the mission so far is “nominal” — the aerospace term for normal or as-expected.

The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster just made it through a crucial moment in the mission: stage separation.

That’s when Super Heavy shut down most of its engines in a moment called “main engine cutoff,” or MECO, as the rocket booster has now burned through most of its fuel.

Starship then ignited its own engines and thrust itself away from the Super Heavy booster in a maneuver SpaceX calls “hot staging.”

Hot staging is essentially pushing the Starship booster away from Super Heavy by way of blunt force trauma.

The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster reached Max Q, or the point of maximum dynamic pressure during a rocket launch.

Essentially, it means the vehicle is still traveling really fast when the atmosphere is very thick, putting the highest strain on the spacecraft. Safely passing through the Max Q milestone is always a key point in any spaceflight mission.

The SpaceX Starship lifts off on Tuesday.

After a minutes-long hold, the countdown clock struck zero, and the Super Heavy rocket booster lit up its 33 engines. The vehicle is now roaring toward space.

The Super Heavy booster will fire for two and a half minutes before the upper Starship spacecraft ignites its own six engines and breaks away.