SpaceX Targets May 27 for Starship Flight 9, First Re-flown Super Heavy Booster
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SpaceX is ready to light up the Texas coast on Tuesday evening, sending its fully stacked Starship-Super Heavy rocket skyward for the ninth time. The two-hour window opens at 7:30 p.m. EDT, and Flight 9 will mark the first reuse of a 33-engine Super Heavy booster—tail number B14—now sporting 29 Raptors after its January debut. Engineers believe tweaks to the Block 2 upper stage will finally let the ship survive re-entry, a milestone that eluded the last two attempts.
NASA has a vested interest in this outing: a more advanced Block 3 Starship must eventually ferry Artemis III astronauts to the Moon, and delays in Starship readiness already pushed that mission to 2027 or later. Each lunar landing will demand a complex ballet of ten-plus tanker launches for on-orbit refueling—none of which can happen until SpaceX nails a flawless orbital test and propellant-transfer demo. Agency officials will be watching telemetry as closely as SpaceX’s Mars-minded founder.
Before liftoff, Elon Musk will livestream his “Road to Making Life Multiplanetary” talk at 1 p.m. EDT, promising fresh details on Mars ambitions and—perhaps—the timing of that long-promised in-orbit fuel swap. Meanwhile, the FAA’s green light and 450 successful Falcon booster landings underscore how fast SpaceX iterates once it clears the launch pad. If Flight 9 sticks the script, the path to lunar and Martian horizons suddenly looks a shade more realistic.
