When will Starship launch? What to know as SpaceX preps for flight 10

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Here’s every thing to know forward of Starship’s tenth flight check since April 2023 from SpaceX’s Starbase in South Texas.

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  • Nearly three months have elapsed since SpaceX final carried out a flight check for a automobile that billionaire Elon Musk has hoped to start launching extra typically.
  • Progress has stymied in 2025 as Starship has met a number of premature explosive midair ends between January and May, adopted by a fiery floor mishap in June.
  • For SpaceX and Musk, the stress is on as they race to develop a automobile that the tech mogul has promised could possibly be launching for Mars in 2026 and utilized in a NASA astronaut lunar mission.

The time is coming for SpaceX’s gargantuan Starship launch automobile to take off as soon as once more from the corporate’s South Texas headquarters.

Nearly three months have elapsed since SpaceX final carried out a flight check for a automobile that billionaire Elon Musk, the industrial rocket firm’s founder, has hoped to start launching extra typically. But progress has stymied in 2025 as Starship has met a number of premature explosive midair ends between January and May, adopted by a fiery floor mishap in June that delayed a mission SpaceX refers to as flight 10.

Once once more, anticipation is excessive – as are the stakes – as SpaceX prepares for the following uncrewed Starship demonstration.

For SpaceX and Musk, the stress is on as they race to develop a automobile that the tech mogul has promised could possibly be launching for Mars in 2026 and utilized in a NASA astronaut lunar mission as early as 2027.

Here’s every thing to know forward of Starship’s 10th flight test since April 2023.

When is the following Starship launch?

SpaceX plans to conduct the tenth flight check of its Starship spacecraft Sunday, Aug. 24, with a goal liftoff time of seven:30 p.m. ET.

Where does SpaceX launch Starship? What to learn about Starbase

SpaceX conducts Starship check flights from the company’s Starbase headquarters in South Texas, positioned about 23 miles from Brownsville close to the U.S.-Mexico border. Texas voters in Cameron County approved a measure in May for Starbase to develop into a metropolis, full with a mayor and a metropolis council.

Starship flight 10: What is SpaceX planning for subsequent launch?

During three separate Starship launches since October, SpaceX has confirmed it is able to returning and “catching” the huge spacecraft’s rocket booster at its South Texas launch website.

Now, the rocket firm is popping its consideration elsewhere: Safely returning and touchdown the automobile’s higher stage, the place a crew of astronauts would at some point journey to house.

The objective is just one of several for SpaceX. Also on faucet? A fourth shot at deploying check Starlink satellites – an goal SpaceX has been unable thus far to drag off.

As for the rocket booster, often known as Super Heavy, it is meant to aim a number of in-flight experiments earlier than making a water touchdown off the Gulf of Mexico, which the U.S. authorities has renamed the Gulf of America.

How to look at livestream of Starship check flight from Texas

SpaceX will host a livestream of the flight check that may start about half-hour earlier than liftoff.

The webcast is offered on its web site and on social media platform X. Coverage will even be obtainable on SpaceX’s new X TV app.

What is Starship?

SpaceX is growing Starship to be a totally reusable transportation system, that means the rocket and automobile can return to the bottom for added missions.

In the years forward, Starship is set to serve a pivotal role in future U.S. spaceflight. Starship is the centerpiece of Musk’s imaginative and prescient of sending the primary people to Mars, and can also be important in NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon’s floor.

How huge is Starship?

The Starship, standing 403 feet tall when fully stacked, is thought to be the world’s largest and strongest launch automobile ever developed. When absolutely built-in, the launch system is composed of each a 232-foot Super Heavy rocket and the 171-foot higher stage Starship itself, the spacecraft the place crew and cargo would journey.

Super Heavy alone is powered by 33 of SpaceX’s Raptor engines that give the preliminary burst of thrust at liftoff. The higher stage Starship part is powered by six Raptor engines that may in the end journey in orbit.

Will Starship journey to Mars? About Elon Musk’s plan

Billionaire Elon Musk based SpaceX in 2002 with the imaginative and prescient of paving the best way to create a self-sustaining everlasting metropolis on the Red Planet.

Why? To fulfill his imaginative and prescient of of “making life multiplanetary” and guaranteeing humanity’s long-term survival.

Musk needs to ship the primary uncrewed Starship to Mars by the top of 2026 for a really important motive: The timeline coincides with an orbital alignment across the solar that may shorten the journey between Earth and Mars. Crewed journeys with people would then comply with more than likely within the early 2030s, Musk has claimed.

Why did Starship explode? SpaceX, FAA examine current mishaps

While SpaceX made regular progress in Starship’s improvement in 2024, the automobile has endured a number of explosive setbacks in 2025.

After beforehand releasing findings into the primary two Starship explosions in January and March, SpaceX has unveiled the results of investigations for the 2 most up-to-date mishaps forward of flight 10.

A structural failure to the booster’s gasoline switch tube and a failure to the Starship capsule’s principal gasoline tank pressurization system led to an premature finish to flight 9 on May 27, SpaceX concluded. Then on June 18, undetected injury to a high-pressure nitrogen storage tank inside Starship’s payload bay part precipitated the automobile to blow up whereas on the check stand.

How typically will Starship launch? Will it launch from Florida? 

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses industrial rocket launches, gave approval in May for SpaceX to conduct as many as 25 Starship check flights a yr as Musk seeks to ramp up improvement of the Mars-bound spacecraft.

Following the newest May 27 flight check, Musk proclaimed on social media that the automobile’s subsequent three launches would happen a lot quicker than regular – at a cadence of 1 “every 3 to 4 weeks.”

SpaceX additionally has designs on expanding Starship operations to Florida at each the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Space Force Base, with plans to conduct a Sunshine State launch probably by the top of 2025.

Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at [email protected]


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