— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 27, 2025 SpaceX hit its first snag with the upper stage when it failed a payload door test that was supposed to let the company deploy some Starlink satellite simulators using what commentators called its PEZ dispenser. The door didn’t open all the way, so SpaceX opted to close it and continue on with its prime objective, which was to survive reentry, part of its eventual effort to have the Starship upper stage to return safely to the launch site. About 30 minutes into the flight, though, Huot revealed Starship had suffered some sort of leak in its fuel tank systems causing it to be in “in a little bit of a spin” and that prompted the company to skip another planned test of relighting one of its Raptor engines midflight. “At this point, we’ve essentially lost our attitude control with Starship. We are still on a path toward reentry. We are suborbital, so no matter what we are going to enter, however, this lowers the chances for it to be a controlled reentry,” he said. “So not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today. We were hoping to do the PEZ deploy and relight an engine, and then, really importantly, get into that controlled entry to really put the heat shield through the ringer.” Without any control, SpaceX opted to dump all of the spacecraft’s remaining fuel. In the end, the company lost contact with Starship about 45 minutes into flight. “We’re continuing to learn more about this ship, about this rocket,” Huot said. “We are trying to do something that is impossibly hard, and it’s not always going to — you’re not going to reach it in a straight line. We said there’s going to be bumps, there’s going to be turns, but seeing that ship in space today was a hell of a moment for us.”