The next Starship flight will test much more than hardware

SpaceX is gearing up to launch its massive Starship rocket from south Texas, a test that gives the company a chance to reverse a brutal few months of mishaps on the ground and in the air.

The last Starship test flight was nearly three months ago, and it notched a milestone: the first reuse of a Super Heavy booster. But that mission ended with the upper stage, also called Starship, or Ship, breaking apart on reentry, and the booster exploding over the Gulf during the landing burn phase of flight.

A few weeks later, the Ship slated for Flight 10 blew up on the ground during a static-fire campaign, destroying a test stand and forcing SpaceX to swap in a new upper stage for this next mission. The Federal Aviation Administration has since closed its mishap investigations into Flight 9, clearing the way for this next attempt.

These back-to-back losses have raised the stakes and turned this next flight into its own kind of test: can SpaceX integrate lessons learned and notch some new wins?

The company’s approach is famously known as ‘build-fly-fix-repeat,’ and each test flight yields a trove of valuable data. But the continued loss of “Ship” during flight has raised questions as to when the megarocket will be ready to carry payloads for commercial customers and NASA.

Despite the setbacks, SpaceX has made remarkable progress on the stainless-steel Starship since the first flight in April 2023. Most recently, the company made history in May when it reflew a booster for the first time, proving that rapid reuse is possible. But returning the upper stage – let alone landing it for reuse, as is the ultimate goal – still seems to be a ways off.

The financial stakes have become increasingly public. In a January filing with Texas regulators, SpaceX said it has already poured “more than 7.5 billion” into Starbase and the Starship program. More recently, SpaceX told Florida’s governor that it plans to spend another $1.8 billion to stand up Starship pads at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Base.

NASA is also banking on Starship’s success.

SpaceX holds two contracts worth $4 billion to develop a version of Starship known as the Human Landing System to return astronauts to the Moon under the space agency’s Artemis program. That mission, Artemis III, is currently scheduled for mid-2027. To meet that date and give NASA the confidence it needs that Starship is safe enough for humans, SpaceX must demonstrate a series of tough milestones beyond simple launch and reentry. Those include perfecting Ship’s reusable heat shield, demonstrating cryogenic propellant transfer in low Earth orbit, and landing Starship on the moon. Any one of these is history-making, and SpaceX must complete them all.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg recently reported that SpaceX reassigned scores of engineers from its Falcon 9 program to Starship to make headway on solving the big rockets problems.  

Starship’s importance to the company’s long-term plans can’t be overstated. Beyond eventually taking cargo and humans to Mars, the long time ambition of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, SpaceX is also counting on bringing Starship online to loft larger sized, higher-throughput versions of its Starlink internet satellites at a higher cadence. As that service passes six million global customers, SpaceX is looking to upgrade the constellation quickly and bring in more revenue to furnish its multiplanetary ambitions.

Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, standing at nearly 400 feet tall, with 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines on the booster and six on Ship. At liftoff, the integrated Starship produces about 16.5 million pounds of thrust.

For this flight, SpaceX plans a controlled splashdown for Super Heavy in the Gulf of Mexico and an Indian Ocean splashdown for Ship.

This will be the fourth test flight this year. Liftoff is scheduled for August 24 with an hourlong launch window that opens at 7:30 PM EDT. SpaceX will livestream the launch on X.