AsianFin — SpaceX faced another setback in its ambitious Starship development program Tuesday, losing contact with the vehicle during its ninth test flight, marking the third upper stage failure this year.

The two-stage Super Heavy-Starship rocket lifted off successfully from the company’s Boca Chica, Texas launch site. But while the ascent went largely as planned, both stages ultimately failed to complete their controlled descents, resulting in the loss of the vehicle.

The Super Heavy booster, designed to return to Earth for recovery and reuse, followed a deliberately steeper and more demanding descent profile. However, the booster experienced a catastrophic failure just as its engines were scheduled to reignite for a final braking burn, moments before splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Starship upper stage continued farther downrange but lost communication before completing its own controlled reentry and splashdown.

Tuesday’s launch follows back-to-back upper stage failures during test flights in January and March. Despite those setbacks, SpaceX has continued to iterate rapidly on the fully reusable launch system, which is central to the company’s plans for deep space missions, including NASA’s Artemis program and future Mars exploration.

The FAA will oversee an investigation into the latest anomaly in coordination with SpaceX.