Elon Musk’s Starship Flight 9 explodes over Indian Ocean, SpaceX calls it ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’

Elon Musk’s SpaceX faced yet another setback after a bumpy test flight of prototype Starship, which exploded over the Indian Ocean on Tuesday (May 27).

The Starship Flight 9 started spinning out of control after the rocket experienced a fuel leak. The world’s biggest and most powerful launch vehicle lifted off around 6:36 pm (2336 GMT) from the company’s Starbase facility in Texas.

The first-stage Super Heavy booster exploded instead of executing its planned splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the live feed, the upper-stage spaceship was seen failing to open its doors to deploy a payload of Starlink satellite “simulators”.

While the Starship flew further than the earlier two attempts, it experienced leaks and started spinning out of control. Mission teams vented fuel to reduce the expected explosion.

“As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly. Teams will continue to review data and work toward our next flight test,” SpaceX said on X.

“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary,” it added.

SpaceX CEO said, “Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent. Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and re-entry phase. Lot of good data to review.”

He added, “Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks.”

This comes after two failed flights earlier this year, Flight 7 in January and Flight 8 in March. Although SpaceX successfully managed to return its Super Heavy booster back to Earth, the Ship stage of the rocket failed soon after liftoff.