Hear this story In the latest fiery mishap in March, it wasn't a fire in the attic as occurred in January, but rather a "flash" closer to the bottom section. After SpaceX submitted a mishap report to the FAA, the agency gave approval for Starship to launch again as early as May 27. For Starship's next launch, SpaceX released a flight plan that calls for attempting a few key objectives to prepare Starship for more frequent flights. In the most recent launch March 6, flight operators lost contact with the upper portion of Starship, which exploded less than 10 minutes into the flight, creating debris visible from Florida to the Caribbean. Despite the failure of the Starship vehicle, the spacecraft's rocket booster managed to navigate back to the launch pad for the second time in a row, and third time overall. The maneuver, first completed in October 2024, involves SpaceX catching the booster with giant mechanical arms known as chopsticks. SpaceX releases report on Starship flight 8 After the first Starship demonstration of 2025 also ended in an explosion, SpaceX later traced the culprit to a series of propellant leaks and fires in the aft section of the vehicle, commonly referred to as the attic. But in the latest fiery mishap in March, it wasn't a fire in the attic, but rather a "flash" closer to the bottom section, SpaceX wrote May 22. Mission operators noticed the flash about five-and-a-half minutes into Starship's ascent burn, followed by what SpaceX called "an energetic event" that led to the loss of one of its Raptor engines. Within about two minutes, the remaining five of the vehicle's six Raptor engines also subsequently shut down, causing the vehicle to veer out of control. This led to the communication breakdown and the vehicle to trigger its own self destruction, SpaceX concluded. Starship eventually reentered Earth's atmosphere within its designated launch corridor and broke apart. SpaceX identified "the most probably root cause" of the mishap as a hardware failure in one of the upper stage's Raptor engines "that resulted in inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition." "Extensive ground testing has taken place since the flight test to better understand the failure, including more than 100 long-duration Raptor firings," SpaceX wrote. The company has frequently stressed that its rapid and frequent testing are expected to sometimes lead to such explosive ends, but that even failed launches can provide data that helps engineers improve Starship's design. FAA gives SpaceX green light for Starship to launch After SpaceX submitted a mishap report to the FAA, the agency released a statement May 22 indicating it had "conducted a comprehensive safety review of the SpaceX Starship Flight 8 mishap." After federal regulators determined that SpaceX "satisfactorily addressed the causes of the mishap," Starship was approved to return to flight. What is SpaceX planning for next Starship test flight? For Starship's next launch, SpaceX released a flight plan that calls for attempting a few key objectives to prepare Starship for more frequent flights. SpaceX will also take a third shot at a Starlink payload deployment test – a key capability for the vehicle in the future that was called off during both previous launches. The eight Starlink simulators, similar in size and weight to next-generation Starlink satellites, will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to burn up on reentry.