On March 6, 2025, SpaceX launched the long-awaited mission of testing its Starship for the 8th time. Just like previous launches, SpaceX test flight eight targets to safely splash down the Starship in the Indian Ocean and to catch the superheavy booster using its Mechazilla tower arms.
The aerospace company planned to deploy four destructible Starlink simulators in space during the mission. SpaceX also expected these simulators to reenter Earth over the Indian Ocean. Even though SpaceX anticipated to accomplish a lot from this mission, things didn’t go as planned. Here’s everything that happened during the test flight.
Everything that happened during SpaceX Test Flight Eight
The mission commenced at exactly 5:30 p.m. CT, on March 6. For the first two minutes, the starship continued to accelerate without any issues. During this time, the Superheavy booster was performing exceptionally well with all of its engines igniting flawlessly. People cheered the launch from across the globe and anticipate what will happen next.
At exactly T+2m40s after liftoff, the spacecraft entered the Hot Staging and a safe separation occurred. After the separation, the starship continued with its journey to space while the Superheavy booster began to descend towards Earth. The descent continued for a while for nearly 5 minutes. At T+7m, the booster executed a boostback burn before getting caught by the Mechazilla tower’s arms.
People cheered for the safe recovery of the booster as it was the third time SpaceX attained such a milestone. At this moment, SpaceX engineers have accomplished the mission goal. Hence, they began to look forward to the splashdown of the Starship in the Indian Ocean. However, at T+8m04s after liftoff, the Starship lost four of its engines as they shut down permanently.
This sudden occurrence caused the spaceship to suffer attitude loss and begin to somersault in space. SpaceX engineers worked tirelessly to remotely restore the spacecraft and get it to move normally. However, every effort made by the team failed. SpaceX engineers lost contact with the Starship at T+8m52s. After that, the spaceship broke into tiny pieces and was captured flying over the Bahamas.
Despite all the efforts made to get the Starship to its planned destination, SpaceX still did not succeed. However, the mission was recorded as partly a success. This is because the first stage booster returned safely and was caught by the chopstick tower’s arms at Starbase.
What is the next plan SpaceX is going to Make?
As the Starship broke apart during its most recent test flight, SpaceX is going to figure out the problem and find possible ways to prevent the errors from ever happening again. During the seventh test flight that was launched on January 16, the SpaceX Starship suffered a similar fate.
Despite SpaceX engineers making efforts to prevent the issue from happening again, they still lost the Starship during the recent 8th orbital test flight. Now, SpaceX will combine their knowledge from the failures of the Starship in the 7th and 8th test flights to make the 9th test flight a great success.
SpaceX anticipates sending Artemis 3 astronauts to the lunar surface aboard the Starship in mid-2027 and to Mars before 2031. If the aerospace company succeeds with their plans, they will surely reach a greater height in making life multi-planetary in our lifetime. Do you believe that SpaceX will make humans multi-planetary before 2050?
