SpaceX fires up Starship spacecraft ahead of 9th test flight (photo)

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SpaceX fires up Starship spacecraft ahead of 9th test flight (photo)

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SpaceX test-fires a Starship upper stage ahead of Starship’s upcoming ninth test flight. SpaceX shared this photo via X on May 1, 2025. | Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX continues to gear up for the ninth test flight of its Starship megarocket.

The company performed a “static fire” test with the Flight 9 upper stage this week at its Starbase site in South Texas.

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ignited one of the 171-foot-tall (52 meters) vehicle’s six Raptor engines during the trial, “demonstrating an in-space burn,” the company wrote via X on Thursday (May 1), in a

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that shared a photo and a short video of the burn.

SpaceX also performed a six-engine static fire with the Flight 9 upper stage on Thursday,

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. The company has not posted anything about that test yet, however.

The 403.5-foot-tall (123 m)

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is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. Its two stages — a giant booster called Super Heavy and an upper stage known as Starship, or Ship for short — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. Both are powered by SpaceX’s new Raptor engine; six for Ship and a whopping 33 for Super Heavy.

Starship has flown eight test flights to date, two of which occurred this year. Both Flight 7 and Flight 8 — which launched on Jan. 16 and March 6, respectively — were partially successful. In each case, Super Heavy did its job and returned to Starbase, where it was caught by the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms.

But Ship exploded less than 10 minutes after liftoff on both flights, raining debris on areas beneath the flight path, such as the Turks and Caicos islands and The Bahamas.

Related stories:

— SpaceX loses Starship rocket stage again, but catches giant Super Heavy booster during Flight 8 launch (video)

—

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— Will 2025 be the year of Starship? SpaceX’s megarocket is growing up.

Flight 9 will reuse Flight 7’s Super Heavy, SpaceX has said. Last month, the company performed a static fire with that booster to prep for the upcoming launch, which will reuse 29 of the 33 Raptors that flew on Flight 7.

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