SpaceX Flight 9 and Ship 36 Report
August 15, 2025

Flight 9
On May 27, 2025, Starship’s ninth flight test successfully lifted off at 6:36 p.m. CT from Starbase, Texas.
The flight test began with the first Super Heavy booster to be reflown starting up successfully and completing a full-duration ascent burn with all 33 of its Raptor engines before separating from Starship’s upper stage in a hot-staging maneuver.
During separation, Super Heavy performed the first ever deterministic flip followed by its boostback burn.

After completing the boostback burn, Super Heavy flew at a significantly higher angle of attack than previous flights during its descent back to Earth, reaching a peak angle of approximately 17 degrees.
This trajectory was a flight experiment to gather data on the limits of the booster’s performance. Once it reached the planned splashdown area, the booster relit 12 of the planned 13 engines for its landing burn.
Shortly after the burn started, an energetic event was observed near the aft end of the vehicle followed by loss of telemetry. Final data was received from the booster approximately 382 seconds into flight and at approximately 1 kilometer in altitude over the designated clear zone.

The most probable cause for the failure at landing burn was higher than predicted forces on the booster structure, specifically on the booster’s fuel transfer tube, due to the increased angle of attack experiment.
Post-flight analysis showed that vehicle loads exceeded the capabilities of the transfer tube which is believed to have experienced a structural failure, resulting in a mixing of methane and liquid oxygen and subsequent ignition.
For the remaining flight tests using this version of the Super Heavy booster, the angle of attack for booster descent will be lowered to decrease aerodynamic forces and minimize the likelihood of structural failure.

SpaceX works with an experienced global response provider to retrieve any debris that may wash up in South Texas and/or Mexico as a result of Starship flight test operations.