Update May 27, 8:42 p.m. EDT (0042 GMT): SpaceX launched Flight Test 9 of its Super Heavy Starship rocket at 7:37 p.m. EDT (2337 GMT; 6:37 p.m. local time in Starbase, Texas). The Super Heavy booster successfully separated from the Ship upper stage, but was lost above the Gulf. The Ship vehicle failed to deploy its mock satellites due to a stuck door and suffered fuel leaks that led to loss of attitude control. The spacecraft fell back to Earth in an uncontrolled tumble over the Indian Ocean.
A lot of eyes will be looking at SpaceX today.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will provide an update on his company’s vision to make humanity a multiplanetary species, followed by Starship’s ninth test flight. Musk was scheduled to begin his talk at 1:00 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) on Tuesday (May 27), but Musk announced a delay just after the talk was supposed to have begun. Starship is targeting a one-hour launch window beginning at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT).
Both will be streamed live on the Space.com homepage and YouTube channel, as well as on SpaceX’s Flight 9 mission page, the @SpaceX X account and X TV app. The broadcast for Musk’s talk will take place after the launch of Starship, the CEO said in a post on X. SpaceX’s stream for Starship Flight Test 9 will begin at 6:50 p.m. EDT (2250 GMT). The stream for Musk’s talk is scheduled for 9:00 p.m. (0100 GMT, May 28).
Both events will take place at SpaceX’s manufacturing and test facility, located in the Texas’s newest official city, Starbase, situated on the state’s southernmost tip.
Musk’s talk comes amidst increased criticism of the SpaceX founder, and his political involvement with President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In a recent call with Tesla investors — another company for which Musk serves as CEO — Musk committed to stepping back from his DOGE involvement to focus more on his business ventures. The last time he gave a pre-Starship launch talk was in April 2024.
Starship, too, is suffering from a public image problem. The two most recent flight tests for the giant rocket ended in the explosion of the vehicle’s upper “Ship” stage, slowing the rocket’s development toward operational status.
Watch On
Just before the Starship flight next week, I will give a company talk explaining the Mars game plan in Starbase, Texas, that will also be live-streamed on 𝕏 https://t.co/cxztHrK285May 13, 2025
Starships Flight 7 and Flight 8, in January and March, respectively, both successfully returned their Super Heavy first stage boosters to Starbase, where they were caught mid-air by the launch tower’s “Mechazilla” chopstick-like arms. But both flights also lost their Ship upper stages in spectacular explosions seen across Florida and The Bahamas.
The back-to-back failures have hampered Starship’s development and put a tighter clock on the vehicle’s expected operational start. NASA has contracted SpaceX to develop Starship as the lunar lander for the agency’s Artemis 3 mission to return astronauts to the surface of the moon. That mission is slated to launch sometime in 2027. Before then, SpaceX has to land at least one uncrewed Starship on the moon and then successfully launch it back into lunar orbit. So far, Starship has not yet completed one full orbit of Earth.
SpaceX’s iterative process through Starship’s development has earned the company praise for the speed with which the launch vehicle has matured, but also criticism over the optics that accompany a giant rocket breaking apart into hundreds of fireballs falling through the atmosphere.
Fully stacked, Ship and the Super Heavy booster stand around 400 feet (122 meters) tall. Combined, they make up the world’s largest, most powerful launch vehicle ever built, and are designed to be fully reusable. Musk has touted the vehicle as the answer to making human life multiplanetary, and has said SpaceX intends to begin launching Starships to Mars beginning in 2026.
Starship Flight 9 is expected to last just over an hour, and will attempt to successfully fly the path its Flight 8 predecessor failed to complete in March. Ship is launching with multiple in-space objectives, including the deployment of eight dummy Starlink satellites and a relight of one of Ship’s Raptor engines. The satellite simulators are expected to burn up on reentry.
This will be the first reuse of one of SpaceX’s Super Heavy boosters. Flight 9 will launch using the same first stage that launched Flight 7. Unlike previous launches, Super Heavy will not return to its Starbase launch site following separation from Ship, and will instead attempt a soft landing in the Gulf waters south of Starbase, where it will be discarded.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. EDT (1715 GMT) to reflect the delay in Elon Musk’s talk to after the Starship Flight Test 9 launch.
