SpaceX is gearing up for its ninth Starship test flight, which marks the first time it will reuse the vehicle’s Super Heavy first stage. On April 3, the company conducted a static-fire test at its Starbase site in South Texas, briefly igniting the booster’s 33 Raptor engines while keeping it anchored to the launch mount.
The Super Heavy has previously been launched and returned after Flight 7, where it successfully landed but the upper stage exploded over the Atlantic Ocean. The same incident occurred during Flight 8, which also had a successful landing of the giant booster but failed to deploy the Starship upper stage for a planned soft splashdown off Western Australia.
For the ninth test mission, SpaceX aims to demonstrate reusable capability with both stages. Prior missions have not reused either the Super Heavy or the Ship upper stage. A target launch date has yet to be announced for this historic flight.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/spacex-fires-used-super-heavy-201332092.html