Yeah, two mysteries, the orange coloring on the heat shield and the 'explosive event' in the skirt. Theories it was from the relight, or possibly hitting a starlink sim somehow?

Scott gets into it around 15-20 minute mark, fwiw. I have no idea. Note the forward fins look fine now that they are more 'leeward' mounted. Those rear fins sure weren't ready for 'rapid re-use' though.

The explosion happened several minutes after the engine relight. It would have left the Starlink sims behind.

Do they have to perform a mishap investigation for that though? You are correct. And it seems to have come from the outside of the vehicle so maybe a clogged thruster or something makes more sense. With all the telemetry data (and cameras not broadcast) I would be surprised if SpaceX doesn't know what happened already/last night.

nortex97 said:

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Do they have to perform a mishap investigation for that though? You are correct. And it seems to have come from the outside of the vehicle so maybe a clogged thruster or something makes more sense. With all the telemetry data (and cameras not broadcast) I would be surprised if SpaceX doesn't know what happened already/last night.

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They met all objectives of the flight so as far as FAA is concerned should be nothing.

SpaceX probably already knows and I think they are playing with heat shields to optimize them.

Agree with Bondag. Plus no one was put in danger.

And btw...

Mars Confirmed 🚀 pic.twitter.com/9YcilRUZcf

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) August 27, 2025

nortex97 said:

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Do they have to perform a mishap investigation for that though? You are correct. And it seems to have come from the outside of the vehicle so maybe a clogged thruster or something makes more sense. With all the telemetry data (and cameras not broadcast) I would be surprised if SpaceX doesn't know what happened already/last night.

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I think the FAA or whoever only cares about catastrophic failures. SpaceX will definitely want to know what happened though.

The skirt was probably the result of heat shield testing and seeing what they could get away with since it isn't structural and wouldn't cause catastrophic failure of they pushed the envelope a little too far.

The orange color after reentry is probably from new tile materials. They could be ablative or something.

There was almost no heat from the re-entry at that point though. They were too high still. The debris didn't even get swept out for a minute or so because the atmosphere was so thin. It was a pretty powerful explosive force, so not sure really what could have caused it outside of something pneumatic in/on the ship itself.

I had just turned it back on when it happened. Wasn't there plasma build up already?

will25u said:

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I didnt see it originally in the feed, but wow....

Can someone tell me what THIS was? pic.twitter.com/7OfqEOQXpr

— Ellie in Space 🚀💫 (@esherifftv) August 27, 2025

There's a single frame which has the energetic event halfway through the frame due to the rolling shutter. The rise time to maximum brightness is about 2% of the vertical scan. Assuming it's reading out at 30fps the 'explosion' took less than a millisecond to go from nothing to… pic.twitter.com/zmmCMxxkE4

— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) August 27, 2025

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They were venting excess fuel and oxidizer because they loaded more than they needed for the flight in order to simulate a fully loaded launch

could this have been those combusting with an ignition source?

Starship Flight 10! What a success!!! And with it, I've captured what has to be my favorite ever slow-mo liftoff footage!
📸 @NASASpaceflight pic.twitter.com/tuF5nH4Gm3

— D Wise (@dwisecinema) August 27, 2025

OnlyForNow said:

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I had just turned it back on when it happened. Wasn't there plasma build up already?

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There was.

So if there was plasma there would be LOTS of heat.... right?

Just looking at that, the damage to the fin and the discoloration around the pez dispenser door makes me wonder how far they are away from reusable (like 1 week turnaround) on Starship. And I know they're testing a ton of things right now. Really, really happy they got all the way through in good order. would love for them to catch a booster and a Starship this year. That'd be... nuts.

Starship landing footage – Stabilized. pic.twitter.com/tPHUKrhOaV

— Space Sudoer (@spacesudoer) August 27, 2025

Correct

Some post #Starship #Flight10 thoughts and what I’m thinking about for Flight 11 and onwards…

Now that SpaceX has validated a lot on version 2, they have one more ship they can play around with and they’re kind of in a funny place with it.

They really want to get to orbit and…

— Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) August 27, 2025

Quote:

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Some post #Starship #Flight10 thoughts and what I'm thinking about for Flight 11 and onwards…

Now that SpaceX has validated a lot on version 2, they have one more ship they can play around with and they're kind of in a funny place with it.

They really want to get to orbit and start validating / testing V3 Starlinks ASAP, could Flight 11 be a chance for that? If they get the green light to go orbital, it means they're confident in engine relight.

So they might look to do a real orbital injection on launch, deploy real Starlinks, and then the relight for a deorbit burn and target the similar splashdown in the Indian Ocean as other missions.

So… My guess is they wouldn't come back for a catch yet because they'll need a couple of successes with a given design before the ok and importantly they need to prove they can make it through reentry without a bunch of stuff falling off and raining debris along the flight path.

This means best case scenario would be use Flight 11 to do an orbital mission but not a catch, Flight 12 (first version 3) would probably need a Flight 10 ish shake down (all suborbital) so if something goes wrong there's not an orbital starship stranded and they can again validate the revised heat-shield / engines etc etc

Which means my guess is a Starship catch might not happen until Flight 13. Just my thoughts seeing the milestones necessary, that's my gut feeling.

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All the photos and videos have me in awe!

Liftoff of Super Heavy, the most powerful launch vehicle in history, on Starship’s tenth flight test pic.twitter.com/dnQQAqKWUf

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 27, 2025

Closer! Closer!!

Straight out of science fiction. pic.twitter.com/uCrJtSkUKH

— Space Sudoer (@spacesudoer) August 27, 2025

will25u said:

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Closer! Closer!!

Straight out of science fiction. pic.twitter.com/uCrJtSkUKH

— Space Sudoer (@spacesudoer) August 27, 2025

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This gives you a great idea of what it's like to see a launch of this thing live. That crazy brightness of the 33 engines in the last few seconds is what you see even up to booster separation. It's like another star in the sky, easy to follow with the naked eye.

This slide needs an update, but gives a rough idea of what we’re aiming for with V3 and V4.

V3 should be built & tested (maybe flown) by end of this year.

V4 is 2027. Probably closer to 150m height and 7500 tons. pic.twitter.com/5WSUR8MORt

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2025

Wow.

Oh I thought V3 was the last one

This looks really nice!

https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/1960811949484015645?t=I-7YbWt5tGHWZ3ptEFH***&s=19

Energia on verge of collapse?

https://www-moscowtimes-ru.translate.goog/2025/08/27/zadel-proeden-situatsiya-kriticheskaya-razrabotavshee-vse-raketi-sssr-predpriyatie-roskosmosa-soobschilo-ofinansovom-krahe-a172832?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Yeah, not clicking that link

Aside from it being in Russian, it's big news. Here's Eric Berger's article discussing the same: Russian space official: "We need to stop lying to ourselves" about health of industry - Ars Technica

I think they could do all of those things today. They could probably do re-entry just fine if they didn't do anything to push the envelope on tiles. I think that they're just more interested in stress testing and pushing the limits on tiles to learn more about them than doing a catch.

Probably doesn't help we're not buying missions from them anymore. SpaceX is killing them just as much as the economic constraints.

TexAgs91 said:

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Oh I thought V3 was the last one

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Oh I don't think we really know where the iterations will stop, because they have no intention of doing so. The plan has long been to develop one that is twice the diameter of the current ones (something in the neighborhood of 18 meters), in 10 or so years. That's fun to ponder, but would require some truly immense GSE to support fueling, staging, catching etc.

And of course they'd need an absolutely mature thermal protection system, which they are still toying with. On IFT-10, I read they used no less than 3 different 'test' thermal tiles, including one that had active cooling (probably the orange coloration-related.

Ultimately, it's all guesswork right now from my bleacher seats as to what they will do, but I would be surprised if iterations stop at something like a notional V7. Once they get the engines, and TPS 'down' and in rapid production/re-use, they will be able to 'think bigger.' The real concern is 'what if something happens to Elon and the company suddenly cares about insane notions like cash flow vs. colonizing Mars?'

Yeah I mean I don't think Elon really has an end goal in mind. He knows he'll never live to actually make humanity an interplanetary species. He just hopes to start the process and push it as far as he can while he's still around.

Making starship 3x taller is completely ****ing bonkers. And still less of a technological marvel than the already-accomplished "both stages can land" capability SpaceX just proved again. Just need to start catching them on the regular.

Decay said:

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Yeah I mean I don't think Elon really has an end goal in mind. He knows he'll never live to actually make humanity an interplanetary species. He just hopes to start the process and push it as far as he can while he's still around.

Making starship 3x taller is completely ****ing bonkers. And still less of a technological marvel than the already-accomplished "both stages can land" capability SpaceX just proved again. Just need to start catching them on the regular.

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