Elon Musk's Starship rocket loses control on its 9th launch

Updated May 28, 2025 at 3:51 PM EDT

Elon Musk's giant, multi-billion-dollar mega rocket launched again from Texas on Tuesday evening for another test flight. This time, however, the rocket lost lost control due to a leak, making a controlled landing unlikely, SpaceX announcers said during the flight's livestream.

The rocket, known as Starship, had experienced a similar issue during its third test flight.

Tuesday's voyage comes after two spectacular failures earlier this year that saw the test vehicles explode high above the Caribbean, scattering debris and forcing aircraft in the region to scramble.

Starship is the largest rocket ever built. On this flight, its lower stage, known as "Super Heavy," used 33 powerful engines to lift Starship to the edge of space. Starship then separated from Super Heavy and ignited its six engines. It flew around earth for less than an hour, while conducting numerous tests. Although several dummy satellites were scheduled for launch, a door on the ship did not open as intended.

Coverage of the test flight ended when announcers lost contact with the rocket, but they predicted it would land in a disoriented position.

You can watch a replay of the launch below:

SpaceX says it would be conducting the landing over water because it wants to test whether the booster can successfully land without one of its three center engines igniting. The engine will be deliberately disabled to see if the booster can compensate using other engines on board.

Starship has completed a similar journey three times before, but it never made it past North America on its last two test flights. Minutes after both launches, it exploded, showering the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos with debris and forcing airliners to divert from their flight paths.

The Starship launchpad is located in Boca Chica, Texas, near a state park and federal wildlife refuge, which has drawn scrutiny from environmentalists.Environmentalists have scrutinized the Starship launches. Records from the Environmental Protection Agency and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality show SpaceX has violated the Clean Water Act by spewing tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater into the Texas environment. Last September, the agencies collectively fined Musk about $150,000 last September for the infractions. Additionally, a report by the Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program concluded that SpaceX launches have destroyed the nests of vulnerable shorebirds.

But the company has trekked on. SpaceX says it now believes the failures were caused by two separate problems with Starship. The first, in January, was caused by "a harmonic response several times stronger in flight than had been seen during testing, which led to increased stress on hardware in the propulsion system," according to the company. The second failure in March was caused by a hardware failure above one of the spacecraft's six engines, which resulted in an onboard fire.

"While the failure manifested at a similar point in the flight timeline as Starship's seventh flight test, it is worth noting that the failures are distinctly different," the company said in a statement after its investigation of the second incident.

Copyright 2025 NPR