The death spiral from the starship's explosion.

Flight Eight after detaching from its booster.

Two Astronauts Back From Space

Two astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were stuck in space for nine whole months (specifically 286 days)! The two were supposed to be in space for only eight days. However, the two ended up being in space for 35 times more time!

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore went to space on June 5, 2024 as the first astronauts to ride on the spacecraft "Boeing's Starliner." They were on the Starliner Test Mission.  The mission aimed to see the ability of the Boeing's Starliner and how the spacecraft handled taking astronauts to space. Williams and Wilmore took off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station over in Florida. The goal of the return was to have the astronauts come back to the Southwest of America.

Why didn't they return? Well, Boeing's Starliner experienced some technical difficulties. The thrusters weren't working properly, and helium was leaking from the transport. Soon, they were trapped in Earth's orbit for time they'd never thought for.

Finally, on March 18 of this year,  the SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft brought the two astronauts home from a long time living in space's environment. The astronauts were interviewed about how they felt about the whole thing. They talked about how they would do the whole journey again if they could because of the magnificent view of space that not everyone could experience. Even so, they also explained how it was tough missing out on their family's life and all that. 

The two astronauts also had to get used to living on Earth again. There's no gravity in space, so they had to get used to the weight of gravity again. Also, it may be the first time in forever for them to breathe in fresh air! Now, NASA and Boeing are working together to try and improve the Starliner Mission.

Williams and Wilmore are back on Earth!

By: Feifei Gao

Excitement fizzed as the spacecraft launched for the eighth time. Crowds gathered online to see the energetic event.

The countdown started.

7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1- BOOM!

The engines fumed. It seemed like the ground was on fire! The speed of the spacecraft rapidly grew. SpaceX Starship’s launch 8 was in action.

On January 16, 2025, a Thursday, SpaceX set out the SpaceX Starship for the seventh time. Sadly, the enormous spacecraft failed to live even ten minutes of flight. The spacecraft had four of its engines powered off eight minutes after blast off. It exploded a little bit afterwards.

Now, about two months later with a new and improved starship, SpaceX hopes to successfully achieve their goal of the starship project. The goal of the project is to launch a spacecraft that’ll carry humans and other material, to break through Earth’s orbit, go beyond Mars, and result as a reusable transportation for space travel. However, SpaceX’s real resolution is to allow human beings to live in space’s environment. The starships could be a small part of their ambitious goal. With each new launch, SpaceX has tried to improvise from the previous experience and come up with ways to fix the problems.

     One success with launch 7 was that the SpaceX team skillfully retrieved the booster in reusable condition. Out of all the seven first launches, four had succeeded and three had failed.

This newly tested spacecraft in March of 2025 is called Starship’s Eight Flight Test. Starship’s Eight Flight Test weighed five million kilograms including the booster! The booster itself was the heaviest though, piling up to 3.675M kg all by itself! The starship only weighed about 1.325M kg. The height of Starship’s Eight Flight Test was 400 feet, which was approximately how tall the seventh launch was. In comparison, The Great Pyramid of Giza and the London Eye Ferris Wheel both go up to almost 400 feet in height (separately)! SpaceX’s starships can carry up to a hundred passengers. Normal rocket ships can only hold 5 to 7 passengers at once, that’s 20 times less than a starship! SpaceX holds practice tests of each new starship to make sure they get things precise.

Now, it’s time for the moment of truth: the launch. It was March 6, 2025, 3:30 in the afternoon in California, USA. You couldn’t really see the launch live in person up close, everyone was watching live television. A countdown started near the last few seconds before blast off. At the last second, clouds of steam rolled in every direction, making the launching field a blur to any creature who dared to face the heat. Everyone was filled with hope that this spacecraft launch would have success.

After zooming in the air for quite some time, the booster detached at about 66 kilometers high. A structure was designed to catch the booster when it detached so that it wouldn’t crash on the ground and be destroyed. All according to calculation, the booster was finally hugged by the catching machine, making everyone joyous.

        It is very important to catch the booster because making a new one is very expensive. Making a booster is said to be about $37 million dollars! By catching the booster of a previous launch, SpaceX can reuse the booster and save millions of dollars. This was a huge success for SpaceX.

As everyone was happy about the booster catch, Starship’s Eight Flight Test continued to zoom upwards to try and break through Earth’s atmosphere. It was all looking good; until… This happened.

The starship started to experience many engine failures of the Raptor engines. Soon, an engine busted. Starship’s Eight Flight Test started to spin out of control. The spinning started to make a death spiral visible to the naked eye. Afterwards, some of the center engines were lost as well. Not only did they lose the engines, but they also lost communication with the starship. Everything was going wrong.

Additionally, Starship’s Eight Flight Test turned on its self-destruct mechanism after about three minutes of losing communication with SpaceX. It exploded mid-flight over the Atlantic Ocean, 145 kilometers over the Caribbean Sea. Many people in Florida saw the explosion from down below. Starship’s Eight Flight Test blasted in a ball of gas, and it spread massive amounts of debris everywhere, which is unhealthy for the environment.

The ratio of SpaceX starships failed to SpaceX starship success is all tied up. Starship’s Eight Flight Test reached a total of 146 kilometers in altitude and its highest speed was 20,439 kilometers per hour.

Some argue that the Starship’s Eight Flight Test wasn’t an improvement. Starship’s Eight Flight Test exploded at about the same time as the seventh launch did. SpaceX proceeds to try and improve their starship, and people believe that the ninth attempt is planned to occur on April 20 of this year. That’s about four to five weeks after the eight launch. The real question is, when will SpaceX achieve the big goal?