The flight lifted off from Starbase in Texas at 5:30pm CT on Thursday, 6 March, before the upper stage exploded, raining debris down in a dramatic light show that caused significant disruption to commercial aircraft in the area.
The explosion led to four airports – Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Orlando – issuing a ground stop while vehicle fragments could reportedly be seen hurtling through the sky as far away as the Caribbean and Pennsylvania.
In a statement released this month, SpaceX identified the “most probable root cause” for the loss of the Starship as “a hardware failure in one of the upper stage’s centre Raptor engines that resulted in inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition” and had a different cause to the similar failure of its seventh test in January.
“Extensive ground testing has taken place since the flight test to better understand the failure, including more than 100 long-duration Raptor firings at SpaceX’s McGregor test facility,” the firm said.
“To address the issue on upcoming flights, engines on the Starship’s upper stage will receive additional preload on key joints, a new nitrogen purge system, and improvements to the propellant drain system. Future upgrades to Starship will introduce the Raptor 3 engine, which will include additional reliability improvements to address the failure mechanism.
“While the failure manifested at a similar point in the flight timeline as Starship’s seventh flight test, it is worth noting that the failures are distinctly different. The mitigations put in place after Starship’s seventh flight test to address harmonic response and flammability of the ship’s attic section worked as designed prior to the failure on Flight 8.”
Starship is the collective name for the SpaceX Super Heavy booster rocket and Starship spacecraft, destined to fly humans to Mars one day.
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Testing began in April 2023 when the spacecraft failed to reach orbit, but culminated in the first stage incredibly returning to the original launch pad and being caught by mechanical arms in October last year.
Its previous test flight, though, which ended in a similar failure, saw SpaceX radically overhaul the vehicle’s design.
Alterations debuting on flight seven included adding new sensors to the launch site to make the pincer-style catches more accurate and redesigning the propulsion system and heat shield.
Adam Thorn
Adam is a journalist who has worked for more than 40 prestigious media brands in the UK and Australia. Since 2005, his varied career has included stints as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer and editor for publications as diverse as Fleet Street newspaper The Sunday Times, fashion bible Jones, media and marketing website Mumbrella as well as lifestyle magazines such as GQ, Woman’s Weekly, Men’s Health and Loaded. He joined Momentum Media in early 2020 and currently writes for Australian Aviation and World of Aviation.
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