SpaceX’s ninth test flight of Starship launches into space, ends in a spin

SpaceX’s Starship successfully separated from its Super Heavy rocket booster and reached orbit Tuesday evening, but later began spinning and made an uncontrolled re-entry into the Indian Ocean. SpaceX had cleared the surrounding airspace where Starship was coming down, according to the company. The ninth test flight provided a mix of successes and failures for the company. It was the smoothest Starship test of the year, following two consecutive explosions. Starship, launched atop the Super Heavy booster, lifted off from SpaceX’s facility in southern Texas on Tuesday evening. It was also the first launch to use a flight-proven Super Heavy booster, which had launched and returned during Starship’s seventh flight test. The heavy booster successfully separated and Starship entered space. But the ship was unable to open a side cargo hatch to deploy mock satellites in one planned test. Later in the flight, Starship lost attitude control, meaning it could no longer orient itself properly f ... Read full article.