SpaceX has revealed that its Starship’s recent test flight failure on March 6 had a different root cause than the previous failure in January, despite occurring at similar times. The company stated that one of the center Raptor engines suffered a hardware failure, leading to “inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition” that caused the loss of the engine. This failure was distinct from the harmonic response issue seen in Flight 7, which resulted in leaks that triggered a fire in the engine bay.
In an effort to address the problem, SpaceX made changes to the Raptors in the Starship upper stage, including adding additional preload to key joints and a new nitrogen purge system. A future version of Raptor is also being developed with reliability improvements to tackle the issue seen on Flight 8.
The latest development comes a day after the Federal Aviation Administration granted its final approval for the next Starship test flight, Flight 9. Scheduled for May 27 at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, Flight 9 will feature the first reflight of the Super Heavy booster using a previously launched unit with some components replaced.
Notably, SpaceX will not attempt to recover the Super Heavy booster during this flight, instead opting for an offshore landing point and testing new flight profiles, including controlling the booster’s orientation and descent. The Starship upper stage will also conduct several demonstrations planned for previous flights, including engine relight in space, satellite deployment, and reentry technologies tests.
A major test of these capabilities is scheduled to take place on Flight 9, with SpaceX aiming to reduce the propellant needed for recovery operations by testing alternative engine landing profiles.
Source: https://spacenews.com/spacex-blames-starship-flight-8-mishap-on-engine-hardware-failure