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Tag: starship

  • SpaceX’s Next-Gen Starship Booster Explodes During Test

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    SpaceX rolled out an upgraded version of its megarocket for pre-launch testing, but images of the next-generation booster show signs of damage ahead of Starship’s first orbital flight early next year.

    On Thursday, SpaceX began the initial round of pre-launch testing of Booster 18, the first Super Heavy for Starship’s version 3 that’s set to debut in 2026. Footage obtained of the company’s Massey test site in Texas showed the booster exploding at its outpost, and an image posted later on X also revealed severe damage to the rocket’s lower half where the liquid oxygen propellant is stored.

    “The first operations will test the booster’s redesigned propellant systems and its structural strength,” SpaceX wrote on X. The company, however, didn’t comment on the damage sustained by the rocket during its testing.

    Bigger is better?

    Last month, Starship version 2 launched for the last time, ending a two-year run on a high note with a successful test flight. The rocket’s second iteration launched on a suborbital trajectory, but SpaceX is now turning its attention toward the third, larger version of Starship in preparation for the first orbital flight.

    The next-generation Starship features a larger vehicle that’s capable of carrying more propellant. The rocket will also use a more powerful and efficient version of its engines, the third-generation Raptor engines. Although Starship’s last two test flights were a major success, they did follow a string of failed launches earlier this year that plagued the rocket’s path to operation. As such, there is a lot riding on the success of the latest Starship prototype. The new version of the rocket is meant to have several upgrades and design fixes to avoid version 2’s explosive streak.

    Earlier in September, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk did admit that because “pretty much everything changes on the rocket with version 3,” there will be a learning curve with the new prototype. The upgraded Starship “might have some initial teething pains because it’s such a radical redesign,” he said during an interview.

    It’s not clear whether the apparent explosion of Booster 18 was a mishap or intentional, as SpaceX may have been pushing the rocket to the breaking point—a deliberate failure—to see how it fares under extreme conditions. Either way, SpaceX is on a tight deadline to deliver a Starship that can land astronauts on the Moon in 2027 as part of NASA’s Artemis 3 mission. Due to delays in development, NASA’s acting head, Sean Duffy, recently revealed that the agency could reopen the Artemis 3 contract to SpaceX’s competitors.

    Musk has also stated that he would like to send an uncrewed Starship to Mars during an upcoming launch window next year. That all depends on the next-generation Starship’s ability to reach orbit by next year and the company’s success in learning how to fly a bigger rocket on a new trajectory.

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    Passant Rabie

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  • Elon Musk’s Starship Rocket Is About to Get a Massive Upgrade

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    SpaceX’s latest test flight of its Starship rocket was a success Monday evening, paving the way for the aerospace company to debut an even more powerful version. It marked an optimistic ending to a test campaign of Starship version two that was initially marked by failures. 

    On the back of Monday evening’s successful launch—the eleventh for Starship overall and final for version two—SpaceX is poised to begin testing Starship V3 later this year or early next.

    “Starship’s eleventh flight test reached every objective, providing valuable data as we prepare the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy,” SpaceX detailed in a post on social media platform X.

    The Starship lifted off from Starbase, the SpaceX company town incorporated in Texas earlier this year, on Monday evening around 7:23 p.m. ET. The Super Heavy rocket successfully splashed down off the coast of Texas, using 12 of 13 engines (one did not ignite). After liftoff, Starship achieved its desired velocity and trajectory and deployed eight satellites meant to represent real Starlink satellites. After the satellite test, Starship relit an engine in flight, which CNN noted was meant to test how the spacecraft may in the future maneuver itself back to land after a mission. It then re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, enabling data gathering on its heat shield, and splashed down in the Indian Ocean.

    SpaceX disclosed in a statement that it has multiple vehicles of the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy in active build. Whereas the Super Heavy is the first stage rocket booster, the Starship is the second stage booster and spacecraft in one. Those future vehicles will be used to test Starship in orbital flights, for “operational payload missions,” and more.

    The Starship and Super Heavy rocket are designed to be fully reusable and capable of returning to their launch site and relaunching without refurbishment. The system is meant to carry payloads of up to 150 metric tons, or 250 metric tons if not being reused. SpaceX also states on its website that it aims for the Starship to carry up to 100 people on “long-duration, interplanetary flights” as well as to deliver satellites and help develop a moon base. This language hints at SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s grander ambitions for the Starship and its Heavy Rocket to ferry passengers to Mars.

    But this past year in testing has been a fraught one for Starship. This year alone, four vehicles exploded—three during flight tests and one on the ground. That said, Musk and the team at SpaceX are already looking ahead to Starship version three, which CNN reported is expected to test later this year or early next.

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    Chloe Aiello

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  • SpaceX is preparing the next-gen Starship after a successful flight test

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    SpaceX’s second-generation Starship vehicle has just made a graceful exit. The company achieved every major objective it set for the super-heavy lift vehicle’s 11th flight test, the second-gen Starship’s final flight, which launched from Starbase in Texas on October 13. It followed another successful test in August, which saw Starship deploy its payload for the first time ever. Before those two most recent flights, SpaceX suffered a series of failures: Starship exploded during its ascent stage in the company’s seventh and eighth tests, and it failed to deploy its payload during its ninth test. Another Starship vehicle blew up on the ground during a routine test while SpaceX was preparing for its 10th flight.

    All of the vehicle’s 33 Raptor engines ignited upon launch, and the stage separation and first-stage ascent went smoothly. The Super Heavy booster splashed down into the ocean as planned, while Starship was able to deploy all its Starlink simulators before re-entering the atmosphere. During its reentry burn, SpaceX intentionally stressed the vehicle to determine the capabilities of its heatshield. And with just a few minutes left to the flight, the vehicle executed a banking maneuver to “mimic the trajectory that future missions returning to Starbase will fly.”

    The company says it will now focus on developing the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy. It has multiple versions of the vehicle and the booster being prepared for tests at the moment, and it expects them to be used for the first Starship orbital flights and operational payload missions.

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    Mariella Moon

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  • Watch Live: SpaceX Launches Starship on its Most Ambitious Test Flight Yet

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    SpaceX’s Starship megarocket is back on the launch pad at Boca Chica, prepared and ready for its final flight test of the year. Flight 11, scheduled to lift off on Monday evening at the earliest, will also be the final test flight for this iteration of Starship, Version 2—if everything goes to plan.

    The launch window will open at 7:15 p.m. Eastern on Monday, October 13, according to SpaceX. A livestream of the event will begin approximately 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch at SpaceX.com or the company’s account on X. You can also tune in through any of the third-party webcasts below.

     

    A transitional moment for SpaceX

    Last week, SpaceX shared photos of Starship’s Super Heavy booster set up on its pad at Starbase, the company’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. The rocket’s upper stage, called Starship or “Ship” for short, is stacked on top of the booster ahead of its flight.

    Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Altogether, it stands about 400 feet (122 meters) tall. But SpaceX is going bigger: The next iteration of Starship—Version 3—will be even larger and capable of carrying 100 tons (363 metric tons) to orbit, according to CEO Elon Musk. Its first launch is expected sometime in early 2026.

    But before SpaceX can roll out Version 3, the company needs this last test of Version 2 to go smoothly. It’s last test, Flight 10, which lifted off from Starbase in August, went off without a hitch. But that launch followed a string of explosive failures that had put Starship off-track.

    For this test, Starship will follow a very similar flight plan to its last launch, just with a few tweaks to further stress-test the rocket’s heat shield and demonstrate maneuvers that are designed to mimic how its upper stages will behave when it is returning to its launch site—Starhsip, after all, is meant to be fully reusable.

    A similar but different flight plan

    In the eleventh test flight, Starship’s Super Heavy Booster is supposed to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico while, its upper stage progresses along a suborbital arc, then reenters the atmosphere for a water landing in the Indian Ocean, according to SpaceX.

    The test will attempt several in-space objectives, including a deployment of eight dummy Starlink satellites and a relight of one of its Raptor engines. SpaceX has again removed several ceramic tiles from the heat shield to stress-test the rocket’s thermal protection system.

    Unlike flight 10, however, this time the spacecraft will perform a “dynamic banking maneuver” during the final phase of the rocket’s reentry, designed to mimic the path it will take on future flights returning to Starbase.

    The booster will also demonstrate a “unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next generation of Super Heavy,” according to SpaceX. The booster will ignite 13 of its 33 engines to start the burn, transition to five engines to fine-tune its trajectory, then downshift to three center engines for the final stage of the burn.

    The booster selected for this launch is flight-proven, having already flown on flight 8 in March. Twenty-four of the booster’s Raptor engines are also flight-proven. This will be the second reuse of a Super Heavy booster, a critical test of SpaceX’s rapid reusability strategy.

    It’s been a turbulent year for the Starship program. After a very shaky start to the rocket’s 2025 launch schedule, SpaceX is now under pressure to reach critical development milestones ahead of its next iteration. Monday’s launch is one you won’t want to miss.

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    Ellyn Lapointe

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  • SpaceX will attempt Starship’s 11th flight test on Monday

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    SpaceX is gearing up for the 11th flight test of its Starship megarocket, which will launch from its Starbase in Texas as early as Monday. The launch window opens on October 13 at 7:15PM ET. You’ll be able to watch live starting 30 minutes before liftoff on the SpaceX website and on X. 

    Starship’s latest flight follows a successful test at the end of August, during which it deployed a payload — eight dummy Starlink satellites — in space for the first time following a failed attempt earlier in the year. The company is aiming to carry out another payload demonstration for flight 11, again using eight Starlink simulators. For this flight, SpaceX is using a previously flown Super Heavy booster, with 24 of its 33 Raptor engines being flight-proven. The goals this time around include “flight experiments gathering data for the next generation Super Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship’s heatshield, and demonstrating maneuvers that will mimic the upper stage’s final approach for a future return to launch site.”

    SpaceX won’t attempt to catch Super Heavy in its “chopsticks” back at the launch site this time. The booster is instead expected to end up in the Gulf of Mexico, while Starship will splash down in the Indian Ocean.

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  • Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Taking More Control of the Texas Coastline Ahead of Starship’s Next Launch

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    Elon Musk’s newly inaugurated space city has been handed control over a piece of Boca Chica beach as it expands its influence over the people and environment living near SpaceX’s rocket launch site.

    Texas’ Cameron County approved an agreement to hand over parts of the beach to Starbase in late September, granting SpaceX the ability to close the beach at Boca Chica ahead of the 11th test launch of its Starship megarocket, currently set for Monday. The move comes after SpaceX has faced criticism over its frequent rocket launches, which have become increasingly disruptive to both the local community and surrounding wildlife.

    Gizmodo has asked both SpaceX and Cameron County for comment.

    Closed access

    Musk’s dream of turning Starbase into this own city became a reality earlier this year when the majority of residents voted in favor of the company town. The city spans about 1.6 square miles (4.1 square kilometers) and is home to roughly 500 residents, the majority of whom are SpaceX employees and contractors.

    SpaceX began buying land in the area in 2012, and has expanded its presence with housing and other facilities, even announcing tentative plans to open a $15 million shopping center. Shortly after Starbase was established as its own town, it sent out a memo to residents regarding a new zoning ordinance and updated city map that could potentially force them to abandon their property.

    Before Starbase was established, SpaceX had been campaigning for the ability to close public beaches and roads in Boca Chica for rocket launches, ground testing, or other related activities during the week. The county’s recent agreement with Starbase grants the company town authority to close down the beach, a decision that previously fell under the authority of Cameron County.

    Starship ramping up

    With Starbase’s newly acquired power, the company may decide to close down the beach to support the development of its Starship rocket. Starship is scheduled to liftoff for its 11th test flight on Monday, October 13. Once Starship is fully operational, SpaceX aims to launch its giant rocket from Starbase as many as 25 times a year.

    Local environmental groups in Boca Chica have voiced their concern that Starship’s increased launch cadence will have a negative impact on the local wildlife and surrounding habitat. SpaceX is also facing fines of almost $150,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency for allegedly illegally dumping pollutants into a Texas waterway without a permit.

     

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    Passant Rabie

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  • SpaceX Wants to Fly Its Gigantic Starship Directly Over Florida

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    SpaceX is inching closer to sending its Starship rocket into low Earth orbit. A newly proposed flight path for the upper stage would see it fly across Florida skies—an unusual route that would seriously disrupt air traffic and raise the risk of debris falling onto populated areas below.

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is reviewing SpaceX’s request for new launch and reentry flight paths that would see its upper-stage Starship rocket crossing over Florida as it makes its way toward space and eventually return for a landing at the company’s Boca Chica launch mount in Texas.

    The agency is considering the safety risks of the new launch trajectories, as well as having to close the airspace over a portion of Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the U.S.

    New flight paths, new risks

    Last month, Starship finally broke its back-to-back losing streak by acing its 10th test flight. Following its near-flawless launch, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk explained that an upgraded version of Starship will soon reach orbit by next year and demonstrate full reusability by landing both the Super Heavy booster and its upper stage.

    Diagram showing two newly proposed Starship flight paths. © FAA/SpaceX/Google Earth

    So far, Starship’s test flights have taken the megarocket on suborbital trajectories. SpaceX is preparing its rocket to reach low Earth orbit and complete a full trip around the planet before returning for a landing attempt at its launch site in South Texas.

    In its request, the company proposed two different routes: one that would fly the rocket toward the Cayman Islands and another that would have it fly directly over Florida. The FAA is reviewing the potential environmental impact the new flight trajectory would have in regard to emissions, air quality, noise pollution, and the potential of hazardous material falling onto populated areas.

    The effect of these over-Florida flights would be non-trivial for commercial airlines. “The launch and Super Heavy booster landing AHAs [Aircraft Hazard Area] could affect a minimum of 10 commercial aircraft per hour, during the lowest period of midnight hours, or up to a maximum of 200 commercial aircraft per hour, during peak daily travel periods,” according to the FAA’s assessment. The plan assumes as many as 22 Starship launches per year.

    A number of Starship’s test flights have ended with the rocket breaking apart and raining debris on parts of the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. In June, Mexico threatened to sue over possible contamination from SpaceX’s rocket launches that sometimes rain bits of debris across the nearby border. Local conservation groups in Boca Chica have also criticized SpaceX, arguing that the Starship rocket poses a threat to the surrounding wildlife habitat.

    In its recent report, however, the FAA concluded that there would be “no significant impact” from Starship’s new launch trajectories. The agency still hasn’t made its final decision; instead, it will hold a public meeting on October 7 and gather comments until October 20 before it makes a decision on SpaceX’s proposal.

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    Passant Rabie

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  • SpaceX’s Starship Lunar Lander Could Be ‘Years Late,’ NASA Safety Panel Warns

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    NASA aims to return astronauts to the Moon by mid-2027—a feat that would fulfill a decade of preparation. The agency may have to extend that timeline even further, however, as slow progress on SpaceX’s lunar lander threatens to delay the Artemis 3 mission.

    During a public meeting on Friday, members of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel warned that the Human Landing System (HLS) version of Starship could be “years late,” SpaceNews reports. The panel reached that conclusion following a visit last month to SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas.

    “The HLS schedule is significantly challenged and, in our estimation, could be years late for a 2027 Artemis 3 Moon landing,” said panelist Paul Hill, former director of Mission Operations at NASA.

    Another Artemis delay—so what?

    Putting American boots back on the Moon is a top priority for NASA. With a new space race underway, global powers including the U.S., China, and Russia are vying for a first-mover advantage.

    Whoever reaches the lunar surface first will be able to set certain ground rules about who can do what and where. This would not only reinforce that country’s influence on the Moon and in space but also give it strategic leverage as military operations increasingly depend on space-based assets.

    “This is a pivotal moment for our nation’s space program,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during a hearing on legislative priorities for NASA earlier this month. He went on to emphasize that space has become a “strategic frontier with direct consequences for national security, economic growth, and technological leadership.”

    How did we get here?

    In 2021, NASA contracted Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build a version of Starship capable of landing astronauts on the Moon. At that time, the agency aimed to accomplish a landing by 2024, but that target date has been pushed back in recent years.

    Development of Starship HLS has slowed significantly as SpaceX has struggled with repeated explosive failures this year. While Starship’s most recent test flight on August 26 was a success, unmet technical milestones have piled up.

    One major issue is demonstrating the cryogenic propellant transfer needed to refuel Starship in low-Earth orbit before the rocket heads to the Moon, Hill said during the Friday meeting. Developmental delays for Starship 3—the first iteration capable of in-orbit fuel transfers—have slowed progress toward this goal.

    Hill also pointed to potentially competing priorities for SpaceX between Starlink and Starship HLS, SpacePolicyOnline.com reports. Starship 3 will be integral in launching the third generation of Starlink satellites while simultaneously creating the on-orbit fuel depots and lunar lander for Artemis 3.

    “The next six months of Starship launches will be telling about the likelihood of HLS flying crew in 2027 or by the end of the decade,” Hill said.

    Despite these concerns, the panelists emphasized that SpaceX is still the only launch provider for the job. “There is no competitor, whether government or industry, that has this full combination of factors that yield this high a manufacturing and flight tempo, with their direct effects on reliability increases and cost reduction,” Hill said.

    The downside to relying on SpaceX, however, is clear: Without a launch-ready Starship HLS by 2027, Artemis 3 won’t get off the ground on time.

    Back in 2023, NASA selected Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to provide a second lunar lander, dubbed Blue Ghost, to be used during the Artemis 5 mission later this decade. The contract is worth $3.4 billion and includes a development team consisting of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Draper, Astrobotic, and Honeybee Robotics.

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    Ellyn Lapointe

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  • SpaceX FAA Starship Launch Lawsuit Dismissed

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    A federal judge has concluded this week that the Federal Aviation Administration did its job in 2022 when regulators signed off on allowing SpaceX to conduct test launches of the world’s largest rocket on the rim of the South Texas Coast at a site surrounded by a delicate ecosystem that hosts endangered species, including the piping plovers, ocelots and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles.

    Thus, in April 2023 when the 394-foot-tall rocket, comprised of the Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster slated to tote humans to Mars someday, subsequently exploded on the SpaceX launchpad just outside of Boca Chica Beach, everything played out as one would expect, right?

    Well, it depends on what you were expecting.

    The explosion littered Boca Chica State Park and Boca Chica Wildlife Refuge with rocket debris, set fire to about four acres of surrounding state park land and scattered chunks of the pulverized concrete launchpad across six miles of terrain, fallout that conservationists contend the FAA should have done more to prevent.

    Thus, in May 2023 a clutch of environmental groups, including the American Bird Conservancy, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe of Texas filed a lawsuit in Washington D.C. accusing the FAA of having failed to conduct a full enough of review of the likely environmental impacts of the project when the agency signed off on the launch.

    The lawsuit contended that the FAA should have done a full environmental impact statement of its own instead of allowing SpaceX to file a Programmatic Environmental Assessment of its own making.

    The commercial space company’s assessment did allow that their program’s proposed Starship launch plan, which would allow up to 20 launches over five years and an expansion of the South Texas site, would likely come with a sizable environmental impact. However, SpaceX offered mitigation measures such as consulting with experts after an “anomaly,” i.e. a rocket explosion in FAA parlance, and collecting the debris, but nothing that aimed at preventing the anomalies from happening or addressing the environmental damages through “restoration and enhancement of habitat effected by the noise, heat and light from rocket launches,” according to the lawsuit.

    The plaintiffs claimed all of this was in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and sought a court order to pause the launches until the FAA had conducted its own environmental impact statement on the launch program, according to the lawsuit.

    Despite the fire and the rubble and the destruction of at least one nest of bobwhite quail eggs and some blue land crabs, in his ruling U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols found that the FAA had done a fairly okay job, actually.

    “Most of the conclusions were well-reasoned and supported by the record,” he stated, regarding the SpaceX-manufactured environmental plan for the launch program. Nichols didn’t go so far as to claim it was perfect though, acknowledging that “parts of its analysis left something to be desired.”

    But, he concluded, this one really wasn’t up to him.

    Citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling indicating that courts aren’t supposed to be sticking their paws into the works of federal agencies so long as the agencies are doing what they’re supposed to do “within a broad zone of reasonableness,” Nichols found that the FAA was more or less on target.

    The “zone of reasonableness” has also been rendered remarkably broad in the past month when it comes to environmental assessment requirements for the FAA and the Department of Transportation, which oversees the agency.

    In August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that loosened environmental rules for commercial space companies, including a requirement to “eliminate or expedite the Department of Transportation’s environmental reviews.” In other words, FAA now has a target so wide you’d have to be blind not to hit it, as far as environmental regulations go.

    Meanwhile, we’re about to see the last of Starship as we know it.

    In the wake of this judicial win, on Wednesday SpaceX posted photos of Starship’s upper stage perched on its South Texas launchpad (located in the community that incorporated itself as Starbase back in May) ahead of its upcoming launch.

    SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said this will be the last test flight of this iteration, dubbed Version 2, of the 394-foot-tall spacecraft.

    Why? Well, because he’s going to roll out the world’s new largest rocket, the 408-foot-tall spacecraft comprised of Starship and Super Heavy, Version 3.

    And we’re likely to see a lot of it.

    In May, FAA regulators signed off on a proposal allowing SpaceX to go from five South Texas launches annually to 25 per year.

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    Dianna Wray

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  • Nudists and Surfers Protest SpaceX’s Plans to Launch Starship From Florida

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    SpaceX isn’t very popular among beachgoers in Florida at the moment. The rocket company applied for a permit to launch its Starship rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which threatens to restrict beach access for surfers and casual nudists.

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently hosted a series of public meetings where residents of the area got to weigh in on its upcoming decision to allow Starship to lift off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. During the meeting, members of the American Association for Nude Recreation expressed dismay at the prospect of shutting down the Playalinda beach, located a few miles away from the launch center, Space.com reported.

    Access to beach denied

    SpaceX is aiming to conduct up to 44 launches per year from Kennedy Space Center, seeking approval from the FAA and the Space Force to carry out its Starship operations from Florida’s Space Coast. The FAA is conducting a comprehensive environmental review and seeking public input from residents of the area, who have expressed concern about the noise resulting from the launches, as well as road and beach closures.

    In its initial assessment, the FAA estimated that Starship’s launch activity in Florida could lead to closing down Playalinda Beach more than 60 times a year. Playalinda is one of a handful of public beaches in Florida and is known as a popular surfing spot, as well as having a clothing-optional section around Boardwalk 13 where public nudity is legal.

    During the public meeting, Erich Schuttauf, executive director of the American Association for Nude Recreation, warned that restricting access to Playalinda Beach would force nudists to travel to nearby clothing-optional beaches and overcrowd them and possibly affect regular (clothed) beachgoers, according to Space.com.

    At another public meeting, it was the community of local surfers who were up in arms about Starship’s proposed activities in Florida, according to Beach Grit. Located within Canaveral National Seashore, the underdeveloped Playalinda Beach offers ideal conditions for surfing. If Starship were to close down access to the beach, it would interfere with when locals could catch the next wave, the surfers argued.

    The local community has even put together an online petition to try and stop SpaceX from taking hold of Playalinda Beach.

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    Passant Rabie

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  • SpaceX’s Next Big Trick: Catch the Starship Upper Stage With ‘Chopsticks’

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    SpaceX finally broke out of a serious Starship slump on Tuesday, acing the rocket’s 10th flight after months of failed attemps. Now, CEO Elon Musk has set his sights on the next big challenge: catching Starship’s upper stage with Mechazilla’s “chopstick” arms.

    In an X post on Wednesday, August 27, Musk said the next opportunities to attempt this feat would likely be flights 13 through 15, depending on how well V3—the next iteration of Starship—performs. The Starship launched Tuesday was a V2, which is slightly smaller and offers less payload capacity and thrust than the forthcoming V3. In another X post, Musk said he expects V3 to be built, tested, and perhaps flown by the end of the year.

    Why catch instead of land?

    The Starship launch system consists of two main components: the ‘Super Heavy’ booster and an upper stage spacecraft called Starship. Both stages are designed for rapid reuse, meaning they need to return to Earth in one piece. That’s where Mechazilla comes in.

    This massive launch tower at Starbase, Texas is equipped with giant chopstick-like arms designed to catch Super Heavy and Starship during their separate descents. This approach is better suited to Starship than soft landing on a droneship or landing pad like the Falcon 9. Starship is much larger, so it would require extra-big landing legs and extensive landing infrastructure to do that. The chopstick catch eliminates those needs and thus reduces weight.

    Can SpaceX pull it off in four months?

    SpaceX already caught Super Heavy on Flight 5 in October 2024, Flight 7 in January, and Flight 8 in March, but it has yet to attempt this with Starship. After the first successful booster catch, Musk said he hoped to catch Starship sometime in 2025, but the first half of the year didn’t exactly go as planned. A series of explosive failures during the first half of the year significantly delayed Starship’s launch schedule.

    If Musk is targeting Flight 13 for a first attempt of the Starship catch, that means SpaceX would need to launch Flights 11 and 12 within the next four months to pull this off in 2025. It’s not an impossibility, but it’s more likely that the first Starship catch will take place sometime in 2026.

    Still, Starship’s near-flawless performance during Flight 10 suggests SpaceX’s luck may be changing. The megarocket launched on time, followed by a smooth stage separation and booster landing—no catch attempt this time. Just over 18 minutes into the mission, it opened its bay doors and ejected payloads into space for the first time. That said, this megarocket still has a long way to go to get to Mars.

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    Ellyn Lapointe

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  • SpaceX’s Starship deploys its payload for the first time

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    SpaceX has successfully launched the Starship for its 10th test flight after it was delayed a couple of times due to weather conditions and other issues. This time, the company was able to achieve its objectives without the vehicle and its booster exploding mid-test. One of those objectives was deploying Starship’s payload for the first time ever. If you’ll recall, Starship exploded during its ascent stage in the company’s seventh and eighth test flights. The vehicle made it to space for its ninth test, but it failed to deploy its fake satellite payload. In June, a Starship vehicle exploded on the ground while the company was preparing it for its 10th flight test.

    The company had to use another upper stage, called Ship, for the 10th flight after that explosion. It also incorporated changes into the Ship and its Super Heavy booster, based on what it learned from those previous attempts. For this test, SpaceX intended to conduct several experiments with the booster, such as flipping it and playing with engine configurations as it made its way back down. Due to the experimental nature of this test, SpaceX didn’t try to catch it with the launch tower’s chopstick arms. Instead, it made a controlled descent into the Indian Ocean, where it exploded upon making contact with the water.

    Meanwhile, Ship continued flying into space. Around 20 minutes after launch, the upper stage started ejecting eight dummy Starlink satellites into space, before re-lighting one of its engines in flight as part of another test. After that, Ship started making its way back to Earth, where it also splashed down into the Indian Ocean a bit over an hour after launch. “Congratulations to all of our teammates here at SpaceX — it’s been a year,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said during the livestream, likely pointing out that it’s been a while since the company has had a good test flight. Of course, SpaceX still has a long way to go, including having to figure out how to retrieve the vehicle’s upper stage after a flight in order for the Starship to be fully reusable.

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    Mariella Moon

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  • SpaceX notches major wins during tenth Starship test | TechCrunch

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    SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket lifted off on its tenth test flight Tuesday evening, hitting two long sought milestones and putting an end to a string of failures.

    The 403-foot vehicle lifted off from Starbase, SpaceX’s launch facility and recently incorporated city, at 7:30 pm ET after two scrubs earlier in this week. The rocket ascended on 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines before separating around three minutes after liftoff.

    On descent, the Super Heavy booster tested out a new maneuver: intentionally shutting down the engines used for landing and transitioning to backup engines. The test will help engineers understand how the Booster might perform in the case of failure. The test appeared to go as planned, with the 232-foot-tall booster successfully making a targeted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.  

    Meanwhile, the upper stage, also called Starship, reached space. There, for the first time on a Starship flight, it opened its Pez-style payload door and released eight Starlink mass-simular satellites. This is a capability that SpaceX had planned, but failed to demonstrate on earlier missions. The company also successfully re-lit one of the Raptor engines in space before guiding the vehicle toward the Indian Ocean, where it splashed down, tipped over, and promptly exploded.

    On the way down, the exterior of the Ship was exposed to incredible heat during atmospheric reentry, providing an excellent test environment for the upgraded thermal-protection system. SpaceX also used this test to try out a series of experiments, like removing tiles from sections of the Ship to see how its “skin” operates on reentry, plus a new metallic tile and an actively cooled tile.

    Most importantly, however, is the upper stage completed the entire test and splashed down in the Indian Ocean without losing comms with SpaceX engineers. Durin the last flight, the Ship reached space and then lost attitude control during the coast phase, preventing the payload doors from opening. Engineers appear to have overcome those issues.

    It’s a big win for SpaceX, which has repeatedly lost the Starship upper stage due to a series of technical failures during flight. The persistent issues have raised questions as to whether the rocket will be ready to land humans on the moon by mid-2027 for NASA, or when it will be capable of deploying next-gen Starlink satellites for the company.

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    This test marks a material advancement for the Starship program, which the company wants to eventually use to send humans and cargo to Mars. While SpaceX still has to complete a series of tough technical milestones before it can get there, it got one step closer tonight.

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    Aria Alamalhodaei

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  • Starship Nails 10th Test Flight, Putting SpaceX Back on Track

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    Following a string of unsuccessful flights, SpaceX managed to pull off its most successful test in months, with Starship fulfilling a number of key milestones.

    It was a good day for SpaceX. The megarocket blasted off on time, leaving the Starbase launch mount at 7:30 p.m. ET. Stage separation went off without a hitch, with the Super Heavy booster landing in the ocean as planned nearly 7 minutes into the mission. Second engine cutoff (SECO) occurred a few minutes later, and Starship began to cruise in space, this time without the awful tumbling experienced in the most recent mission.

    History was made at the 18:30 mark, when Starship opened its bay doors and ejected payloads into space for the first time.

    A view of the dummy Starlink satellites as they were being dispensed into space. © SpaceX

    In this case, the payloads were mock-ups of next-gen Starlink satellites. Acting like a Pez dispenser, Starship popped each dummy satellite into space one at a time and in roughly one-minute intervals (the units will fall back to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere). It marked a huge moment for SpaceX, with Starship finally functioning as a delivery vehicle.

    About 38 minutes into the flight, Starship re-lit one of its vacuum-optimized Raptor engines—the second time SpaceX has ever pulled off the maneuver.

    A view of Starship during reentry
    A view of Starship during reentry. © SpaceX

    Reentry of Starship began at roughly the 45-minute mark, with the spacecraft hurtling towards the Indian Ocean. SpaceX ran a stress test on the vehicle, deliberately compromising its heat shield to be “mean to the spaceship” and putting it “through its paces,” as SpaceX’s Dan Huot said during the broadcast. The fins in particular were pushed to the limit, with one of them showing clear signs of scarring.

    The Starship upper stage returned to Earth at 8:37 p.m. ET, ending the 67-minute mission. Despite the abuse, Starship executed its last-moment flip, performing a landing burn and splashing down softly into the Indian Ocean before exploding in a fireball. Incredibly, a camera mounted on a nearby buoy managed to catch the action.

    Starship performing a landing in the Indian Ocean
    Starship performing a vertical, controlled landing in the Indian Ocean. © Starship

    This was the flight that SpaceX desperately needed. We’ll learn more about the test in the coming days and weeks, but the modifications made to the oversized launch system appeared to do the trick. But as we’ve learned, a single successful test is no guarantee of future gain. SpaceX still has a long way to go before this incredible launch system is fully operational.

     

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    George Dvorsky

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  • SpaceX is about to launch Starship for its 10th test flight

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    SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket is scheduled to lift off from the company’s Texas launch site as soon as this evening for its 10th flight. The launch window opens at 7:30PM ET (6:30PM CT). As always, the flight test will be livestreamed on the website and on X, with a webcast starting 30 minutes before launch. The weather is looking iffy for launch, though, so don’t be surprised if this one gets postponed; SpaceX said on Saturday that conditions were looking only 45 percent favorable. According to , the company has backup opportunities on August 25 and 26.

    Flight 10 follows a series of failures this year during SpaceX’s , and test flights. And in June, a Starship vehicle exploded on the ground during preparations for a static fire test of its six Raptor engines. If all goes according to plan for Flight 10, Starship will deploy eight dummy Starlink satellites and perform “several experiments focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site.” It won’t actually be returning to the launch site this time, though. The test is expected to last a little over an hour, and end with a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

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    Cheyenne MacDonald

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  • Watch Live as SpaceX Tries to Prove Starship Isn’t a Total Flop With Flight 10

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    SpaceX is gearing up for the tenth test flight of its megarocket following a streak of failures that have cast doubt on Starship’s ability to fly to Mars in 2026.

    Starship is slated for lift-off on Sunday, August 24, during a launch window that opens at 7:30 p.m. ET. SpaceX recently wrapped up investigations into the rocket’s previous test flight, which took place on May 27 and ended with the vehicle breaking apart during reentry. This was the third Starship flight of 2025 and the latest in a series of failures. For flight 10, SpaceX has integrated hardware and operational changes to its rocket in an effort to increase its reliability, according to the company.

    Starship’s test flight will be broadcast live on SpaceX’s website, as well as the company’s X account. You can also tune in through the live feed below.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr-P3Gmrqtk

    Sunday’s test flight will attempt similar mission objectives that went unfulfilled during previous flights due to various anomalies. For the fourth time in a row, SpaceX will attempt a payload deployment test. For this test, the rocket will deploy 10 Starlink simulators, each similar in size and weight to the company’s next-generation satellites. Rather than remaining in orbit, these Starlinks are designed to follow a suborbital trajectory and are expected to burn up during reentry.

    During the upcoming test flight, SpaceX will not attempt to catch the rocket’s Super Heavy booster at the launch mount. Instead, the booster will head on a trajectory to an offshore landing point in the Gulf of Mexico to test its landing burn. During the descent, one of the booster’s three engines will shut down to test the ability of a backup engine to take over. The booster will then use two center engines for the final landing burn, hovering briefly above the ocean before dropping into the Gulf of Mexico.

    For Starship’s upper stage, SpaceX has removed several tiles from its heat shield to “stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry,” the company wrote. The tiles were removed from vulnerable areas and hot spots that were observed during Starship’s sixth flight test.

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted SpaceX the green light for Starship’s upcoming flight after concluding the investigation into Flight 9. The investigation traced the mishap from the previous flight to structural issues that resulted in “a mixing of methane and liquid oxygen and subsequent ignition,” SpaceX wrote in a statement. To avoid similar issues during upcoming flights, SpaceX said it would lower the booster’s descent angle to reduce aerodynamic forces and prevent another failure.

    The company also addressed the explosion that took place on June 18 at SpaceX’s Massey facility near Starbase. The explosion annihilated the Starship prototype that was supposed to fly on Flight 10. SpaceX traced the anomaly to damage to a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV), which stores nitrogen in Starship’s payload bay. “To address the issue, COPVs on upcoming flights will operate at a reduced pressure with additional inspections and proof tests added prior to loading reactive propellants onto a vehicle,” the company wrote.

    Starship has had a rough run since the beginning of the year. The rocket’s seventh test flight in January ended with Starship’s upper stage exploding roughly eight-and-a-half minutes after launch. Starship’s upper stage met a similar fate during its eighth test flight in March when six of its nine Raptor engines died during the ascent burn. During Starship’s most recent test flight in May, the rocket also suffered a slew of failures. Although the vehicle reached its planned velocity, a propellant leak led to loss of control, and it broke apart during reentry after failing to achieve its mission objectives.

    SpaceX said it has made several changes to its rocket to avoid yet another failure during flight test number 10, hoping that Starship finally breaks its long losing streak.

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    Passant Rabie

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  • SpaceX successfully catches Super Heavy booster after launching Starship’s fifth flight

    SpaceX successfully catches Super Heavy booster after launching Starship’s fifth flight

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    SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster successfully returned to the pad after liftoff to be caught by the launch tower’s mechanical arms in an incredible feat Sunday morning. The milestone came during the fifth flight of the company’s Starship, and is a huge step for the rocket’s planned reusability. Starship launched at about 8:25AM ET from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas Starbase.

    Landing rockets is nothing new for SpaceX, which has now been reusing its Falcon 9 workhorse for several years, but the company took a completely different approach for recapturing Super Heavy. Whereas Falcon 9 typically lands on a drone ship out in the ocean, Super Heavy returned to its launch site and had to navigate into the narrow opening between the launch towers’ outstretched “chopsticks.” The move risked destroying the tower if Super Heavy didn’t pull it off correctly. It did, though, and live footage from the flight test shows the booster neatly parking itself back at the tower to thunderous cheering from everyone watching from the viewing room.

    Starship, meanwhile, continued on its flight for about an hour after separating from the booster and splashed down in the Indian Ocean as planned around 9:30AM ET. The entire Starship transportation system, consisting of the Super Heavy first stage and the Starship second stage, is designed to be reusable.

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    Cheyenne MacDonald

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  • SpaceX’s Starship Launch from the South Texas Coast Doesn’t Explode

    SpaceX’s Starship Launch from the South Texas Coast Doesn’t Explode

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    SpaceX completed its fourth test flight of Starship, the most powerful launch vehicle ever constructed, from Boca Chica Beach on the South Texas Coast on Thursday morning, and it was one hell of a show.

    Right on cue, at 7:50 a.m. (CST) the 397-foot-tall rocket, comprised of the Super Heavy reusable booster and the Starship crew capsule, erupted from the launch pad, 32 of the 33 methane-powered Raptor engines firing up and sending it aloft with 16 million pounds of thrust. On SpaceX’s livestream, employees and spectators whooped and hollered as it climbed.

    Then they got quiet, waiting to see if the lessons from the previous attempts and the software and hardware updates from the most recent try in March were going to pay off with a successful test flight. Would they be able to put the Super Heavy and Starship through their paces and bring both through the process intact?

    It was a tall order.

    Starship’s previous test flights launched in April 2023 (IFT-1), November 2023 (IFT-2) and last March (IFT-3), each of them ending in an explosion, with the last two ending unceremoniously with a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

    Thus, going into the launch (IFT-4), SpaceX officials from founder and CEO Elon Musk down seemed intent on managing expectations. The goal would be “demonstrating the ability to return and reuse Starship and Super Heavy,” according to a SpaceX statement, by getting both through the flight without a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Then the Super Heavy would be aiming for a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico while Starship was expected to splash down in the Indian Ocean landing.

    (SpaceX seemed to have been bracing for another surprise explosion or two to the point the company’s application for a launch permit from the Federal Aviation Administration outlined the three ways that Starship and the Super Heavy were most likely to suddenly explode — due to a thermal shield failure, a loss of control during the flight or an engine failure during a landing burn – so that the explosion wouldn’t automatically trigger an FAA investigation.)

    As the countdown moved into its final 30 minutes, Kate Tice and other SpaceX commentators leading the company’s livestream video, repeatedly reminded viewers that the goal was not to recover the booster or Starship on this flight, but to simply get both through the atmosphere before they exploded. And then it all went swimmingly.

    Minutes after launching into the gray morning, the spacecraft began flipping through the air as the Super Heavy booster and Starship separated, just as planned. Once that was done, the carefully coordinated dance continued. The 165-foot-tall Starship fired up its engines and soared into space while the Super Heavy planed away.

    The booster usually exploded right around now, but this time tit didn’t and then the booster’s engines fired. The Super Heavy flipped itself upright. Within moments the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, its landing site, came into view from a camera mounted on the booster that was streaming uninterrupted as the Super Heavy completed its task thanks to Starlink satellites.

    Meanwhile, Starship’s cameras captured the gleaming expanse of space and then the atmosphere as the vehicle began its reentry. This was the other point when it seemed quite reasonable to expect another explosion.

    But instead, Starship continued coming back in, bathed in light and streaks of fire as it hurtled down, all of it continuing to stream, uninterrupted from a camera on the vessel.

    Starship continued coming back in, bathed in light and streaks of fire as it hurtled down, all of it continuing to stream, uninterrupted from a camera on the vessel.

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    The camera went in and out, and cracked and became obscured by debris as Starship plummeted. Each time, the SpaceX crowd on the livestream went quiet, as if waiting to hear the craft had come apart.

    At a little over 30 miles altitude, the steering flaps began to crumple and break apart. “The question is how much of the ship is left,” Tice said.

    But it didn’t. As starship’s altitude monitor approached zero, engineers ordered a final maneuver, flipping the spacecraft vertical, just before it dropped into the Indian Ocean.

    “Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!” Musk declared on X while the livestream at SpaceX headquarters was filled with cheering happy faces and the hosts of the event roasting marshmallows with enormous Starship-shaped silver butane lighters.

    NASA officials must be breathing a sigh of relief. First, Boeing’s Starliner, the alternative to SpaceX’s commercial crew vehicle, finally launched on Wednesday, giving the federal space agency a viable non-Musk way of getting astronauts to the ISS. At the same time, SpaceX is contracted to start taking astronauts to the lunar south pole for Artemis III, which is on the docket for 2026, and they just might pull it off.

    It’s a fast turnaround time. But working at a pace based on the engineering method of “rapid spiral development,” SpaceX is going for it. The company started the year with four Super Heavy rockets, and in March Musk stated the plan is to conduct six test flights within the year.

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    Dianna Wray

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  • A Complete History of Elon Musk’s Fascination with the Magic Number 420

    A Complete History of Elon Musk’s Fascination with the Magic Number 420

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    Elon Musk attends the premiere of “Lola” at Regency Bruin Theatre on Feb. 3, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

    It’s April 20, the unofficial holiday in cannabis culture dedicated to advocating for the legalization of marijuana. The date is strongly associated with Elon Musk, as the Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX CEO frequently made references to the number 420 in tweets and interviews in recent years—sometimes in a humorous manner but other times completely serious. Here is a look back at Musk’s well-documented fascination with the magic number over the years.

    Proposing taking Tesla private at $420 a share

    In August 2018, Musk famously tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share—a significant premium over Tesla’s stock price at the time—and claimed he had “funding secured.” This tweet eventually landed him in legal trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission for potential market manipulation, a charge he later settled. 

    During a trial of the case in January 2023, the Tesla CEO testified that his choice of the $420 price point was not a joke but a well thought-out business decision. “There is some karma around 420 although I should question if that is good or bad karma at this point,” he told the attorney representing a group of Tesla shareholders.

    Joe Rogan Podcast appearance and Twitter bio update

    A month after his controversial Tesla tweet rattled Wall Street, Musk was invited as a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. He got so comfortable in the setting that at one point he was seen puffing a joint on camera. For a brief period after the podcast aired, Musk changed his Twitter bio to read “420” before reverting it to its original state that read “Engineer.”

    The incidents sparked widespread discussion about the significance of the number 420. Musk had previously expressed his views on marijuana legalization, suggesting that he’s not opposed to its use.

    Embedding the number in Tesla products

    Musk has displayed a tendency to incorporate the number 420 into his company’s products whenever he can. In October 2020, he announced on Twitter that Tesla would drop the price of its Model S sedan from about $72,000 to $69,420—a nod at another of his favorite numbers, 69.

    Musk also initially targeted a 420-mile driving range for Tesla’s Model S Plaid, a high-end version of the Model S. But at the vehicle’s launch in June 2021, its window sticker said 405 miles, and the final EPA-rated range was slightly lower than 396 miles. 

    Last year, Musk suggested in a Twitter conversation that he wanted to name an important version of Tesla’s FSD (Full Self-Driving) software Beta 11.420.

    Pricing SpaceX at $420 a share during fundraising

    In early 2021, SpaceX raised $850 million in a private equity funding round that valued the space company at $76 billion. The company reportedly sold shares at $419.99 apiece, just one cent below its CEO’s lucky number.

    Launching Starship’s maiden test flight on 4/20

    In Musk’s eye, April 20 is also a lucky date for rocket launches. On this day last year, Musk watched SpaceX test launch a prototype of Starship from the company’s test ground in Boca Chica, Texas. It was the first attempted orbital flight of Starship.

    Acquiring Twitter for $54.20 a share 

    In October 2023, Musk acquired Twitter, now X, for $54.20 per share in a transaction that valued the social media company at $44 billion, about 25 percent higher than its market value at the time. Musk at one point attempted to walk away from the deal, but a federal judge eventually nudged him into going through with it eventually.

    Random “420” tweets 

    Sometime Musk just appeared to want to compose 420-themed tweets for no obvious reasons. In April of last year, he posted that the “final date for removing [Twitter’s] legacy blue checks is 4/20.” Earlier this year, he replied to a post about Tesla’s EV market share being 4.20 percent at the end of 2023 by noting, “I was born 69 days after 4/20.” Here are a few other examples:

    A Complete History of Elon Musk’s Fascination with the Magic Number 420

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    Sissi Cao

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  • WATCH LIVE at 8:30 a.m.: SpaceX test launch No. 3 for Starship

    WATCH LIVE at 8:30 a.m.: SpaceX test launch No. 3 for Starship

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    Starship will try to fly again Thursday morning, SpaceX says.

    The company will attempt the third launch of its super-heavy rocket at 8:30 a.m. ET from Boca Chica, Texas. News 6 will stream the attempt live when it happens.

    There will be a 110-minute launch window for the test.

    SpaceX has made two attempts to successfully launch Starship into space which ended in explosions, but SpaceX says both tests completed major milestones and led to invaluable data.

    “Each of these flight tests continue to be just that: a test. They aren’t occurring in a lab or on a test stand, but are putting flight hardware in a flight environment to maximize learning,” SpaceX officials say on the company’s website.

    During the second test in November, the rocket ignited all engines successfully and completed stage separation, but the test was not completed and the rocket was destroyed.

    The third flight attempt for Starship hopes to include several objectives, including opening and closing Starship’s payload door, re-lighting a Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry for the spacecraft, which would splashdown in the Indian Ocean if successful.

    Starship is the vehicle that is expected to land astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program. That mission is expected to happen no earlier than September 2026.

    However, a Government Accounting Office report last year said delays in Starship’s development are hampering the launch of the Artemis III mission. The report said 2027 was a more likely scenario for launch.

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    Christie Zizo

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