Starship Flight 8: Starship Block 2 once again finds trouble during flight

SpaceX was able to get its Starship Flight 8 off the ground after a scrub Monday afternoon; its goal was to repeat the Flight 7 objectives. However, Flight 8 ended in a similar spot, with Ship 34’s ascent into space being cut short due to an unknown issue.

At 5:31 P.M. CT, SpaceX successfully lifted Starship Flight 8 off from its launch site in South Texas on its suborbital mission to the Indian Ocean. The objectives of the flight were similar to those of Flight 7, testing changes to the Block 2 Starship upper stage, stress-testing the heat shield, and deploying dummy Starlink satellites before splashing down off the coast of Australia.

With that, the end seemed to be about the same as well with the booster, Booster 15 for this flight, successfully lifting off and returning to the launch pad for a nominal catch. This makes it three catches now that SpaceX has been able to perform with Starship.

The upper stage, Ship 34, completed a successful hot-staging and ignited its six Raptor engines for its flight up to space and over Earth. What looked like a normal flight turned upside down at the T+8 minute mark, where Starship lost altitude control. This spin caused SpaceX to lose connection a few times with Starship as the Starlink antennas came and went from view.

No official reason has yet been shared as to what caused the early conclusion of Starship Flight 8, but it seemed to have been a bit more dramatic compared to Flight 7.

Reports have come in from individuals in Florida that the flight termination system did trigger, with debris being seen all the way north in Orlando. However, the flight path took south of the Florida peninsula. With more dramatic videos coming from on watchers in the Bahamas.

Some X users have shared clips from SpaceX’s livestream, claiming to see an engine explode on a SpaceX employee’s monitor. This is unconfirmed at the moment, but there were signs of excessive gas coming from the rear of Ship 34 that would be similar to an explosion. However, the source of such an explosion could have come from multiple locations, not just an engine.

For now, we wait for the FAA to make any statements about any added debris zones for aviation or a requirement for a mishap investigation. SpaceX gained approval to launch Flight 8 without having its investigation signed off by the FAA. However, SpaceX shared its findings last week, stating it made changes to mitigate the issue that caused Flight 7’s conclusion.

For now, we await more information either from SpaceX or its CEO Elon Musk as to what could have caused Ship 34 to conclude early once again.