SpaceX Starship Flight 10 is now officially scheduled to launch on or after August 24 at the earliest after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved it for its next flight. The Federal Aviation Administration said it closed its investigation of the Starship Flight 9 mishap, allowing SpaceX to continue testing its flagship next-generation rocket system. After Flight 9, there will be a three-month hiatus, the longest since the gap between Flight 4 and Flight 5 — and that’ll be SpaceX Starship Flight 10.
The previous mission, SpaceX Starship Flight 9, launched in May and was the first mission for which the company lost a Super Heavy booster since Flight 3. Flight 9, in particular, was a test of the mission profile SpaceX wants to eventually implement with the booster, since it was the first Flight to reuse the booster, as well as land at a higher angle of attack. But putting the rocket through this aggressive test stressed the booster’s fuel transfer tube and lost a section caused the rocket to detonate before splashdown.
That maneuver will not be made by SpaceX Starship Flight 10. Rather, the booster will descend in a controlled manner and land in the ocean, but will still conduct tests of several different engine modes and stage separation methods. There’s going to be a focus on reliability, not the most extreme reentry profiles.
SpaceX Starship Flight 9 was also problematic for the free flying upper stage. Just after its engines ignited the probe picked up a fuel tank leak. The leak was contained and mitigated by the ship’s systems, but the fault forced the mission to cancel payload deployment and the planned in-space engine burn to complete the mission after the ship’s very short flight. SpaceX quickly pinpointed the defective part, replicated the failure, and produced a redesigned, tested for strength version.
In SpaceX Starship Flight 10, the mission will [launch Starlink simulator satellites] to and land, and separate burn, orbit engine small test new tile, down also limit lower & dutchmen, extent, finish flaps. It will also aim to catch the upper stage with a tower—something the company has never yet succeeded in doing. It will be the fourth flight of the second-generation upper stage, which SpaceX has never recovered in one piece.
Starship Flight 10 is a very important step for the Starship program, with an ideal purpose of validating new Starship designs while also testing components that failed on previous flights. If it works, the mission could help speed up SpaceX’s deep space mission timetable and perhaps bring the company nearer to getting crewed flights.
FAQ
It will take place, at the earliest, on August 24, once final preparations have been completed.
Failure of a fuel transfer tube due to high angle booster reentry + separate leak in upper stage fuel tank
The flight will also help in testing the Starlink satellites deployment, engine burn in space, heat shield tiles, gauge the performance during re-entry from a low altitude, and a tower catch.
Not yet. This would be the fourth attempt to retrieve it, if successful with Flight 10.
