Starship Flight 10: What’s next?

With Starship Flight 9 in the books, we now start the long road of getting Flight 10 cleared for launch. We’ve been here a few times in the past, so what should we be looking out for?

Testing continues. Just because SpaceX suffered its third failure of its Starship program in a row, it doesn’t mean they’re slowing down. Starbase is still at full speed with Ships 36 and 37, with testing well underway to get flight-ready.

We’ll also likely see additional tests on Ship 36 once SpaceX figures out what went wrong on Flight 9 and how to fix it. SpaceX will conduct tests to verify the fix usually pretty close to when we expect Flight 10 to launch. When that might be is still a mystery.

FAA Investigation… again. As expected, the FAA opened a mishap investigation into the failure of Ship 35 on Starship Flight 9. However, it is just on the ship; Booster 14’s failure was exempted due to it being purposely pushed beyond design limits during descent.

These investigations are led by SpaceX, with the FAA having the final sign-off before clearing Starship for another launch. We’ve seen these investigations take a matter of weeks to a couple of months before being completed; it all depends on how complicated the fix is.

While it will delay SpaceX’s progress toward getting Starship operational, it’s a necessary step even without the FAA’s oversight, as SpaceX would need to fix the failure point before reflight.

Another likely repeat. Once SpaceX completes its mishap investigation, the company will likely repeat the Flight 9 mission profile and objectives again, for the fourth time.

This is because the mission objectives on this profile are crucial for getting the FAA sign-off to launch orbital and necessary SpaceX requirements for program development. The most important is the in-space relight of a Raptor engine, something required if an orbital Starship wants to have a controlled reentry. Flight 9 couldn’t complete this test due to the loss of altitude control on Ship 35.

The other objectives are the deployment of dummy Starlink satellites, Flight 9’s door wouldn’t open, and the overall validation of the Block 2 aerodynamic design and heat shield. The Block 2 variant of Starship’s ship section brought various changes to both the aerodynamic and propellant designs of the vehicle. It seems like Flights 7 through 9 have found the bugs in the propellant changes with still unknown issues on the aerodynamics and heat shield changes.

When is Flight 10? We’ll know when Starship Flight 10 is nearing when testing has slowed down on the booster and ship, they have completed heat shield tiles, and marine and airspace restrictions begin to show up. Marine restrictions usually show up first both off the coast of Florida and Africa. This is then followed by flight restrictions in the same areas.

Finally, the FAA will announce its sign-off of the mishap investigation, sometimes before the restrictions but likely not as SpaceX moves faster than it.