SpaceX Cleared for Starship Flight 9 Launch Following FAA Safety Review Approval Highlights FAA clears SpaceX Starship Flight 9 launch after mishap review Launch scheduled for May 27 from SpaceX’s Starbase, Texas site Super Heavy booster from Flight 7 will be reused in Flight 9 Advertisement The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has cleared SpaceX to proceed with the ninth test flight of its Starship rocket. Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, with two stages, Super Heavy and Ship. Both stages are fully and rapidly reusable. After taking a long look at the anomaly that occurred on Starship's most recent mission, which launched on March 6, the FAA announced the decision on May 22. The first-stage booster of Starship, Super Heavy, performed successfully in SpaceX Starship Flight 8 and will be reused. Flight 8 Investigation Leads to Expanded Safety Measures According to the FAA officials, they conducted a thorough safety review of the Flight 8 mishap before authorizing SpaceX to resume launches. In that flight, while the Super Heavy booster executed a successful return to Starbase using the launch tower's “chopstick” arms, the upper stage disintegrated less than 10 minutes after liftoff, raining debris over The Bahamas. This outcome — Super Heavy's success and Ship's failure , was a repeat of Flight 7, which lifted off in January. On that test mission, the Starship debris fall was centered on and around the Turks and Caicos Islands. As a result of these failures, the FAA has expanded the designated Aircraft Hazard Area (AHA) for Flight 9. Previously stretching 885 nautical miles, the new AHA now covers approximately 1,600 nautical miles eastward from Starbase, Texas, including regions over the Straits of Florida, The Bahamas, and Turks & Caicos. To limit the disruption to air traffic, the FAA has also mandated that the launch take place during off-peak hours.