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SpaceX announced that the eight flight test of its Starship vehicle will take place no earlier that Monday, March 3, 2025. The word comes after the company tentatively scheduled it for Friday February 28, and said it may well change again.

The previous launch ended with mixed results as the Super Heavy booster successfully executed its boostback burn, returned to Earth and was caught by the launch/catch tower as planned. However, after stage separation, the second stage experienced a major malfunction as it continued on its suborbital trajectory.

The malfunction resulted in the second stage, referred to simply as ship, breaking up and cascading back into the atmosphere in a light show seen from Turks and Caicos.

SpaceX said an investigation revealed that the loss of ship was due to a harmonic response that was several times stronger during flight than was seen in testing. This led to increased stress on the propulsion system hardware, and the subsequent propellant leaks exceeded the vent capacity of the “attic” section where they occurred and resulted in fires.

All debris from the second stage was confirmed to have come down in the pre-planned Debris Response Area with no hazardous materials and no significant impacts to the area. The company said that the vehicle’s safety system did trigger, and that the breakup occurred within the parameters of the Flight Termination System.

As an adjustment to the vehicle for the upcoming flight, additional vents and a new purge system were added to the attic section to be more responsive to propellant leakage.

The upcoming mission will also fly a suborbital trajectory similar to Flight 7, and include the test deployment of four Starlink simulators similar to the next-generation satellites. It will also run several reentry experiments designed to enable the second stage to return to the launch site. The flight will also include the launch, return, and catch of the Super Heavy booster.

FMI:  www.spacex.com/