SpaceX gets updated Starship launch license but still awaits Flight 9 approval

SpaceX still has some boxes to tick before it can launch the ninth test flight of its Starship megarocket.

On Friday (May 15), the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it has approved license modifications ahead of Starship Flight 9, which will lift off from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. That license officially grants SpaceX's request to boost the number of Starship launches from Starbase per year by a factor of five, to 25 — something that the agency greenlit earlier this month in an environmental assessment.

"However, SpaceX may not launch [Flight 9] until the FAA either closes the Starship Flight 8 mishap investigation or makes a return-to-flight determination," agency officials said in an emailed statement on Friday. "The FAA is reviewing the mishap report SpaceX submitted on May 14."

Flight 8 launched from Starbase on March 6. Things went according to plan at first; Super Heavy, Starship's giant first-stage booster, aced its engine burn and returned to the site for a dramatic catch by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms.

But Starship's 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage, known as Starship or simply Ship, didn't fare so well. The vehicle exploded less than 10 minutes after liftoff, raining debris down on The Bahamas.

It was pretty much a repeat of Flight 7, which launched on Jan. 16: Super Heavy returned to base that day, but Ship went boom over the Atlantic, with fiery spacecraft chunks splashing down on and around the Turks and Caicos Islands.

These two mishaps spurred U.K. government officials to reach out to the U.S. State Department, requesting that the Flight 9 trajectory be changed to help safeguard British territories in the Caribbean, according to ProPublica. (The Turks and Caicos are a British Overseas Territory; The Bahamas is an independent nation but is part of the Commonwealth.)

The FAA appears to share at least some of that concern.

"For the Starship Flight 9 mission, the FAA is expanding the size of aircraft and maritime hazard areas both in the U.S. and other countries," agency officials wrote in the Friday statement. "This is a result of the FAA requiring SpaceX to revise the Flight Safety Analysis following the prior launch mishap and because SpaceX intends to reuse a previously launched Super Heavy booster rocket for the first time."

The Flight 9 aircraft hazard area now includes both The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, according to an environmental assessment of the mission that the FAA released on Friday.

The Super Heavy that will be be reused on Flight 9, by the way, is the one that conducted Flight 7. SpaceX is swapping out just four of its 33 Raptor engines; the other 29 will fire up again on Flight 9, according to the company.

SpaceX has been gearing up for Flight 9 for a while now. It has already performed "static fire" engine tests with both Super Heavy and Ship, for example.

Elon Musk said on May 13 that SpaceX was aiming for liftoff sometime this week. He also said that he'll provide a livestreamed update about the Starship program shortly before the flight.

It's unclear if SpaceX will hit that Flight 9 timeline, however, given that the FAA is still reviewing the Flight 8 mishap report.