UPDATED 10:03 AM ET May. 27, 2025 PUBLISHED 1:28 PM ET May 26, 2025 PUBLISHED 1:28 PM EDT May 26, 2025 SHARE BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas — SpaceX announced that it will be testing out some new objectives and experiments during its ninth Starship launch on Tuesday. And one of those experiments is having the booster rocket being used for a second time, which is a first for Starship. What You Need To Know Super Heavy is the rocket booster part of the vehicle, while the spacecraft is called Starship When they are stacked together, they are known as Starship Starship will be part of the Artemis III mission that will send people back to the moon And while Starbase became its own city earlier this month, later this year, Starship is expected to launch from Florida. What to expect from the ninth test flight This ninth test flight will see some new experiments and objectives, for example, this will be the first time a Super Heavy booster will be used twice. The booster B14 was first used during test seven earlier this year, which was caught by the launch tower’s chopsticks. The reused Super Heavy booster will not be caught by Mechazilla, as it is affectionally known, for test nine, however. “The booster on this flight test is also attempting several flight experiments to gather real-world performance data on future flight profiles and off-nominal scenarios. To maximize the safety of launch infrastructure at Starbase, the Super Heavy booster will attempt these experiments while on a trajectory to an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America and will not return to the launch site for catch,” explained SpaceX, adding it will be a hard splashdown. After the hotstage separation, the booster will flip in a coordinated direction before starting the boostback burn. In previous tests, the booster would flip in a random direction, but SpaceX hopes that a known direction will use less fuel, which can be used during liftoff. It also means more payloads or heavier payloads can go into orbit. Plus, 29 of the 33 Raptor engines will be included in the reused booster. “Lessons learned from the first booster refurbishment and subsequent performance in flight will enable faster turnarounds of future reflights as progress is made towards vehicles requiring no hands-on maintenance between launches,” SpaceX stated. As the booster is returning for that hard splashdown in the Gulf, initially, three of the center engines will be used for the final phases of the landing. This is done on purpose to gather data. Then the booster will switch to only using two center engines for the landing burn. Now, for the Starship craft itself, which will eventually hold 100 humans, it has its own test objectives. Starship will deploy eight Starlink satellite simulators. This will be the first time that Starship will have a satellite deployment mission, even though these are not actual Starlink satellites. These simulators are expected to burn up on re-entry. During the eighth test back in March, four simulators were going to be deployed, but that did not happen due a malfunction. “The most probable root cause for the loss of Starship was identified as a hardware failure in one of the upper stage’s center Raptor engines that resulted in inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition,” explained SpaceX. SpaceX stressed that the in-flight mishap seen in the last test is “distinctly different” from what happened in flight seven. On Thursday, May 22, the FAA cleared Starship for takeoff. “With the Starship vehicle return to flight determination, Starship Flight 9 is authorized for launch. The FAA finds SpaceX meets all of the rigorous safety, environmental and other licensing requirements,” the agency stated. During the ninth test, the upper stage Starship will attempt to meet several objectives. “The flight test includes several experiments focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site. A significant number of tiles have been removed from Starship to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry. Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry. On the sides of the vehicle, functional catch fittings are installed and will test the fittings’ thermal and structural performance. The entire ship's tile line also received a smoothed and tapered edge to address hot spots observed during reentry on Starship’s sixth flight test. Starship’s reentry profile is designed to intentionally stress the structural limits of the upper stage’s rear flaps while at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure,” stated SpaceX. The Starship is expected to have a watery landing in the Indian Ocean. If all goes well, test flight nine will be completed in an hour and six minutes. Starship's Test Flights