For flight nine, the Super Heavy booster won't return to the launch site, but will instead splash down in the ocean. The Starship upper stage will attempt to deploy eight Starlink dummy satellites, and SpaceX is otherwise looking to this flight to test "several experiments focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site."

SpaceX's gargantuan Starship rocket is due to once again get off the ground from Texas more than two months since its last launch.