{"id":21424,"date":"2025-04-07T22:29:52","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T14:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/starship-flight-9-to-see-first-reused-booster\/"},"modified":"2025-04-07T22:29:52","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T14:29:52","slug":"starship-flight-9-to-see-first-reused-booster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/starship-flight-9-to-see-first-reused-booster\/","title":{"rendered":"Starship Flight 9 to see first reused booster"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"img-border featured-image\">\n<p>\t<img width=\"100%\" src=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/04\/Gnojxa1XwAAerb4.jpeg?quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1600\" class=\"skip-lazy wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/04\/Gnojxa1XwAAerb4.jpeg?w=320&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/04\/Gnojxa1XwAAerb4.jpeg?w=640&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 640w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/04\/Gnojxa1XwAAerb4.jpeg?w=1024&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/04\/Gnojxa1XwAAerb4.jpeg?w=1500&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 1500w\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" data-attachment-id=\"43081\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/2025\/04\/07\/starship-flight-9-to-see-first-reused-booster\/gnojxa1xwaaerb4\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/04\/Gnojxa1XwAAerb4.jpeg?quality=82&amp;strip=all\" data-orig-size=\"2000,1000\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-title=\"Starship Flight 9 Booster 14 static fire\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\n\n<p>Image: SpaceX<\/p>\n<p>&#8221; data-large-file=&#8221;https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/04\/Gnojxa1XwAAerb4.jpeg?quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1024&#8243;><figcaption>\n\t\t\t\tImage: SpaceX\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">SpaceX announced that its Starship Flight 9 mission will see the rocket\u2019s first taste of reusability with the booster from Flight 7. The company also announced that a vast majority of the Raptor engines that flew on the booster will return for flight as well.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Read more:<\/strong> Starship Flight 9: SpaceX shows off Ship 35 heading for testing<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-43079\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thursday morning, SpaceX fired up the engines on Booster 14 on Launch Pad A for a first-of-its-kind static fire. While every Starship test is usually exciting, this one was the relight of an already flown booster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Booster 14 first lifted off on January 16, 2025, and was the first flight of Starship\u2019s Block 2 Ship design. The mission was expected to be a final suborbital certification flight before attempting its first orbital flight on Flight 8. However, the ship suffered a failure before finishing its ascent, causing a redo of the mission on Flight 8.<\/p>\n<p>\t<span class=\"outbrain-ad-label\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\t\t<script type=\"text\/plain\">\n\t\t\twindow.adSlotsConfig = window.adSlotsConfig || [];<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tadSlotsConfig.push( {\n\t\t\t\tslotID: '\/1049447\/Outbrain',\n\t\t\t\tslotName: 'div-gpt-ad-outbrain-ad-43079',\n\t\t\t\tsizes: [300, 250],\n\t\t\t\tslotPosition: 'mid_article'\n\t\t\t} );\n\t\t<\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, Booster 14 successfully returned to the launch pad and was caught by the tower\u2019s catch arms, marking it as the second Starship booster to return successfully. Booster 12 was the first to complete this catch on Flight 5; however, it doesn\u2019t seem like that piece of flight hardware will get the honor of reflight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Booster 14\u2019s static fire is notable for being the first flight-proven booster to go through this process. Also, we\u2019re still in the dark as to when Flight 9 will be taking place. Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, usually is the one to spill timeline dates after milestones like static fires, but all he stated on X after the test was, \u201cFirst reflight of the Starship Super Heavy rocket booster coming up soon!\u201d This could mean we still have some time before Flight 9 is ready to fly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Given that the mishap investigation into Flight 8 remains open, while Flight 7\u2019s was just recently closed, and that the failures of Flights 8 and 7 were so similar, <em>I would guess Flight 9 won\u2019t take place until Flight 8\u2019s investigation is closed by the FAA.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both Flight 7 and 8 failed during similar parts of their flight profiles, just before finishing the Ship\u2019s ascent burn. This means once again Flight 9 will likely have the same sub-orbital profile as those two, as SpaceX hopes to complete its milestones of an in-space relight of a Raptor engine and deployment of dummy Starlink satellites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Flight 8 was the first point in Starship\u2019s development that felt like a step backward. While it\u2019s important to note that any flight in a development program like Starship\u2019s means more flight data to improve the design, it marked an end to the constant forward movement towards activating the world\u2019s first fully reusable rocket.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Starship is already behind on its timeline to be NASA\u2019s Human Landing System for its Artemis Program, a program whose future will be called into question as Jared Isaacman is likely to be confirmed soon as NASA Administrator. Both Isaacman and Musk, who is also a close advisor to the President, have had issues with the program\u2019s reliance on Boeing\u2019s Space Launch System.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the other hand, Musk is dead set on sending humans to Mars and claims he can do it in the next four to five years. A plan that has tickled President Trump\u2018s ego, as it is yet another \u201cKennedy Moment\u201d for a grand, ambitious plan, even though the likelihood of that happening is next to zero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}