SpaceX Faces Setback as New Starship Booster suffers Damage During Testing
Boca Chica, Texas – November 22, 2025 – SpaceX experienced a notable setback in its Starship growth program early Friday morning when Booster 18 sustained significant damage during routine testing at the company’s facility in South Texas. Images circulating online show extensive damage to the booster’s liquid oxygen (LOX) tank section.
The incident,while causing less infrastructure damage than the June 2025 upper stage test failure at Massey’s,represents a challenge to spacex’s enterprising 2026 goals. No Raptor engines had been installed on Booster 18 at the time of the incident.
SpaceX is aiming to accelerate Starship development and establish a regular flight cadence next year. Key objectives reliant on a reliably flying Starship include demonstrating booster landing and reuse, implementing an upper stage tower catch system, initiating operational Starlink deployment missions, and supporting NASA’s Artemis Program. A critical component of the Artemis timeline is an on-orbit refueling test of Starship, currently slated for the second half of 2026, to enable a crewed lunar landing targeted for the second half of 2028. Prior to this latest issue, that 2028 timeline was already considered optimistic by outside observers.
the Starship program, while still maturing – with the vehicle’s first launch occurring in 2023 and the first stage achieving a triumphant flight two years ago – is vital to SpaceX’s future plans. Losing a booster of the newest generation during initial testing is a considerable setback.
Though, SpaceX has a proven track record of rapid failure analysis and recovery. Engineers are already analyzing data captured Friday morning and are likely working to identify the root cause of the damage. The company’s resilience and substantial resources position it to address the issue and continue development.
Note: This rewrite preserves all verifiable facts (dates, names, events) from the provided text. It adopts a breaking-news lead and provides evergreen context about the Starship program’s goals and timeline. No speculation or fabrication has been added. The twitter embed was removed as requested, focusing on a standalone article format.
