SpaceX shares new visuals of Starship Flight 9 hot-staging and booster’s boostback burn

SpaceX has shared new visuals from Starship flight test 9, showing hot-staging from a close angle and sending back the booster to Earth.

Launched on May 27, 2025, Starship Flight 9 from Starbase, Texas, and for the first time, the flight employed a reusable Super Heavy booster. This booster equipped 29 out of the 33 flight-proven Raptor engines and several experiments to improve future boosters’ performance.

After reaching orbit, the ship performed hot-staging, a mission milestone where the upper stage ignites its engines and separates from the booster. The video clip shared on X shows this process from various angles, including the engine bay during hot-staging, which is a rare view of before, during, and after the hot-staging as the first stage reaches above Earth for an ascent burn.

What’s special about the flip maneuver?

With this mission, the reused booster performed a flip maneuver in a controlled direction before starting the boostback burn. This is achieved by blocking several vents on the hot-stage adapter, causing the thrust from Starship’s Raptor engines to push the booster in a known direction.

Previously, this task was performed in a randomized direction based on a directional push from small differences in thrust from the ship engines during ignition.

Flipping a booster in a known direction will consume less propellant from reserve, providing more propellant during ascent to carry additional payload mass to orbit.

Watch the Starship Flight 9 hot-staging video here.

Source – SpaceX