FAA issues ground stop after SpaceX loses contact with Starship 8 minutes into launch

Yahoo

07-03-2025

March 6 (UPI) -- SpaceX's Starship 8 roared into the late afternoon Texas sky from Starbase near Brownsville Thursday, but scientists lost contact with the craft minutes later. It was the first test flight since Starship 7 exploded mid flight in January.
"We have lost contact with the ship. "It is no longer providing telemetry," a commentator said on SpaceX's live stream. "It looks like several engines have shut down and we've lost control of the vehicle."
SpaceX said there are several safety measures in place to keep the public safe in the event of a mishap. It's the second consecutive Starship mission that has ended in failure. The rocket exploded of the Florida coast minutes after the launch.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ground stop for air traffic in Florida as a result of the errant rocket. Ground stops are typically issued when there is a security threat or bad weather.
The first stage fuel cell returned successfully to a pair of waiting arms known as "chopsticks," which caught it minutes after the rocket hurtled toward space.
Elon Musk's SpaceX said it had improved Starship's hardware systems to increase the reliability of its fuel cell since the failed mission of Starship 7, which exploded over the Turks and Caicos on Jan. 16, sending debris into the Caribbean.
SpaceX blamed the Starship7 accident on a propellant leak, and released details of the explosion in a report. The company did not release details about the cause of the Starship 8 mission failure Thursday and said only that some of 6 Merlin engines that power the rocket appeared to have shut down midflight.
Starship 8 was attempting to accomplish the same goals that the previous mission failed to do because of the accident.
The Starship 8 mission was scheduled to fly the same suborbital trajectory as previous missions and will target objectives not reached on the previous test, including Starship's first payload deployment and multiple reentry experiments geared toward returning the upper stage to the launch site for catch.
SpaceX said in addition to hardware updates, it also made improvements to Starship 8's forward flaps, modifying their ability to tilt and better protect itself from heat upon atmospheric reentry.
"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, SpaceX added.
That change is independent of a change to the rocket's propulsion system, which is reflected by an upgrade over previous missions that will allow for a 25% increase in the fuel cell's propellant volume and is not only expected to help on the Starship 8 mission, but on future ones, as well.
SpaceX also made upgrades to the systems that allow a pair of mechanical arms, referred to as "chopsticks," that catch and harness the returning reusable fuel cell after it has sent the Starship into low-Earth orbit.
Starship 8 was scheduled to deploy simulations of the next generation of SpaceX's Starlink satellites, part of the company's expanding network of Internet satellites.