FAA green lights Starships ninth launch

STARBASE, Texas (ValleyCentral) — The Federal Aviation Administration has found adequate data to reflect that SpaceX has met all requirements of its comprehensive review for its Starship Flight 8 mishap, granting the company permission to fly again.

The FAA made its determination based on several factors, including:

• The nature of the mishap
• The performance of vehicles safety-critical systems
• The generation of unplanned debris

Additionally, the administration states that it must find any system, process or procedure related to the mishap on March 6 for its eighth test flight. During this test, the space company lost contact with the Starship carrier just a few minutes into its launch.

The FAA states that Starship has the green light to fly again as soon as it implements all the corrective actions needed from its previous flight.

As previously reported by ValleyCentral, flight seven of Starship left plenty of debris over Turks and Caicos, causing an artificial meteor shower watched by many worldwide. At the time of the shower, many aircrafts were rerouted to avoid the area that Starship had affected.

In an effort to mitigate the chances of this happening again, the FAA stated it is in communication with the United Kingdom, Turks & Caicos Islands, Bahamas, Mexico, and Cuba to protect public safety.

In its ninth flight, SpaceX anticipates that Starship will cover about 1,600 nautical miles and extend eastward from the Starbase launch site, formerly known as Boca Chica Village.

Additionally, the FAA is requiring SpaceX to have a liability insurance policy of $500 million to cover any claims made after the flight.

As of press time SpaceX has not released a date for when it will launch its ninth flight from Starbase.

To watch the ninth test flight of Starship or to see what is happening now at the launch site, visit LabPadre for real-time video of the flight grounds.