Flight 8 saw third booster catch, but Starship failed to complete ascent again

Flight 8 was a mixture of both success and failure, similar to the previous test flight.

Starship lifted off from Starbase on Thursday 6th March, 72 hours after an earlier scrub. Drone footage provided a spectacular early view. All 33 Raptor engines of the Super Heavy booster ignited to propel Starship through a nominal first-stage ascent. Stage separation went smoothly, with Starship’s six Raptor engines all ignited.

Lift-off, Flight 8. Credit: SpaceX

Super Heavy then relit 11 of the 13 Raptors for its boostback burn, then 12 of the 13 for the landing burn - before leaving just the 3 centre engines running to manoeuvre the booster into the arms of the launch and catch tower. Success for the third time.

Super Heavy booster’s landing burn. Credit: SpaceX

Starship continued its ascent until four of the Raptors went out and the video feed suggested a fire or similar. SpaceX have confirmed there was an “energic event in the aft portion” that led to the failure. There was an obvious loss of altitude control, and Starship went into a spin, as the two remaining engines then failed. A loss of communications occurred at 9 minutes and 30 seconds into the flight, signalling that the Flight Termination System had been activated.

This was disappointing because SpaceX were confident they had mitigated the problem that led to failure a minute or so earlier during Flight 7. It’s still very early days - and it must be stressed again that this is a test flight program - but the block of planned updates to the upper stage, “bringing major improvements to reliability and performance”, have so far produced anything but what was intended.

Written by Iain Scott, 7th March 2025