Starship Flight 7 disintegration investigation is closed but Flight 8’s still open

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has closed an investigation on Starship Flight 7 after a mishap occurred with the second stage following hot-staging.

Launched on January 16, SpaceX lifted off Starship Flight 7 from Starbase, Texas with 33 Raptor engines burning at full power. The team performed a successful hot-staging after Max Q, followed by the booster returning to the Earth with a boostback burn.

The booster received a Go to chase the return trajectory and completed the landing phase to get caught by the launch tower chopsticks.

On the other hand, the second stage fired its six Raptor engines to lead the mission into sub-orbital plane. However, that didn’t go according to the plan.

After eight and half minutes in the mission, the ship’s telemetry lost before the engine burn completion. SpaceX revealed that a fire developed din the aft section of the ship, caused a rapid unscheduled disassembly (RUD).

The ship later reentered the Earth’s atmosphere, where it turned into debris and scattered through the sky. It was observed by people in the Turks and Caicos Islands and later went viral on social media site X. Still, no public injuries have been recorded.

In a statement, the FAA said that the SpaceX-led investigation was overseen and accepted. The final report submitted to the aviation authority shares the cause of the disintegration.

“The root cause for the loss of the Starship vehicle was stronger than anticipated vibrations during flight led to increased stress on, and failure of, the hardware in the propulsion system.” wrote FAA.

In the Starship Flight 7 investigation report, SpaceX mentioned 11 corrective measures to prevent them from occurring during Flight 8. However, the same mishap occurred again during a flight on March 6, when the ship saw a similar problem in the engine section, leading to the disintegration.

The FAA is also overseeing the Flight 8 mishap investigation, and it will remain open until the authority accepts the mishap report and makes corrective improvements to the rocket.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has already preparing Flight 9 launch vehicle with new improvements to the upper stage and fly it through the entire test flight.

(source)