The Federal Aviation Administration said on May 27 that SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12 launch on May 22 ended in a mishap, triggering a required investigation before the vehicle can fly again. The agency said the failure involved the Super Heavy booster as it flew back to the Gulf of America after stage separation.
SpaceX had intended the booster to begin a boostback burn after the Starship upper stage peeled away, then finish with a landing burn and a soft splashdown in the Gulf. Instead, telemetry shown during the company webcast indicated the booster appeared to suffer failures in several of its Raptor 3 engines shortly after the burn started, and the maneuver ended after less than 20 seconds, far short of the planned one minute.
The booster struck the water at nearly 1,500 kilometers per hour, according to the webcast telemetry, and fell into a debris response area activated by the FAA. There were no reports of damage, but several aircraft were delayed on departure or held airborne because of the anomaly. The FAA said it will oversee SpaceX’s mishap investigation and must approve the company’s final report and corrective actions before Starship can fly again.
Flight 12 was the first launch of version 3 of Starship, a test flight that brought numerous upgrades to both stages and introduced the Raptor 3 engines. SpaceX still completed many of its stated objectives, including deploying Starlink mass simulators in space and guiding the upper stage to a soft splashdown in its targeted landing zone in the Indian Ocean.
The agency had already said it was looking into the Super Heavy anomaly, but on May 27 it took the next step by classifying the event as a mishap. Under FAA rules, that designation applies when a launch or reentry does not finish as planned, and it means SpaceX cannot move ahead with another Starship flight until the investigation identifies the root cause and the corrective actions the agency signs off on. In practice, the open question is no longer whether the booster failure matters. It now determines the pace of SpaceX’s next attempt.
