SpaceX Starship Program Is Back On Track After Textbook Flight 10

Iteration in action is sometimes hard to witness. Three times this year, SpaceX tried to test changes to its Starship-Super Heavy launch system, only to uncover other, more pressing issues that needed to be resolved first.

Nine months and four lost Starships later, SpaceX finally collected key flight-test data needed to help bring the planned reusable, refuelable and high-tempo launch system into operational service.

• Starlink deployment system is tested
• On-orbit refueling trials to begin next year

The U.S. space program is banking on a variant of the Starship to land astronauts on the Moon, presumably in 2027 and hopefully ahead of China, a key tenet of the Trump administration’s marching orders for NASA.

For that mission, SpaceX needs not only to repeatedly demonstrate Starship orbital flight—which has not yet occurred—but also to develop and perfect large-scale in-space refueling, another first. The Starship-Super Heavy system is designed to carry 110-165 tons into low Earth orbit, then be refueled with liquid oxygen and methane for travel to the Moon, Mars and other destinations.

From a new factory in Starbase, Texas, located near the southernmost tip of the state on the U.S. Gulf Coast, SpaceX plans to manufacture thousands of Starships per year eventually to fulfill founder, CEO and Chief Engineer Elon Musk’s goal of establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars.

Being hardware-rich is how SpaceX managed to try four times this year to put a Version 2 Starship through a full-duration suborbital flight test, ending with a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. After three failed attempts—plus a ground accident that claimed a fourth ship—SpaceX finally pulled that off on Aug. 26.

Running two days late due to a ground system leak and then poor weather, the Starship-Super Heavy first stage, powered by 33 methane-fed Raptor 2 engines, ignited at 7:30 p.m. EDT (6:30 p.m. local time), kicking off the program’s 10th integrated flight test.

Generating more than 16.5 million lb. of thrust—more than twice the power of NASA’s Space Launch System or the legendary Apollo-era Saturn V rocket—the 403-ft.-tall Starship-Super Heavy headed toward a suborbital trajectory to begin a 66-min. flight. One engine shut down during ascent, with no discernible impact on the mission.

Two minutes and 36 sec. after liftoff, all but three of the Super Heavy engines shut down, while the six Raptors on the Starship upper stage ignited to push itself off the booster, a technique known as hot-staging.

As the Starship headed to its intended near-orbital trajectory, the Super Heavy completed a controlled flip and then conducted a 12-engine boostback burn to return toward the launch site. The flip maneuver, demonstrated for the first time on Flight 9 in May, requires less propellant to be held in reserve, allowing more lift capacity for payloads.

Three previous Super Heavy rockets returned to the launchpad and were captured in midair by a pair of giant mechanical arms on the tower. SpaceX passed on the gantry landing for Flight 10 so it could test the booster’s performance during a simulated engine failure during the critical landing burn.

One of the booster’s three center engines was intentionally disabled to test a scenario in which a middle-ring engine would fire up to compensate for the lost thrust. The test ended with just two center engines burning, leaving the Super Heavy to hover for a few seconds over the ocean. When the engines cut off, the booster dropped into the Gulf of Mexico and exploded as expected, bringing its part of the mission to an end.

The Starship meanwhile completed a 6-min. 19-sec. burn of its six Raptor engines to reach near-orbital velocity and an altitude of about 120 mi. The primary object of Flight 10 was to collect data during atmospheric reentry that will enable future Starships to return to the launch site for reflight.

“There are thousands of engineering challenges that remain for both the ship and the booster, but maybe the single biggest one is the reusable heat shield,” Musk said during SpaceX’s Aug. 25 Flight 10 webcast. “We are confident in making a fully reusable heat shield, but it will require many flights, many iterations to figure out where the weak points are in the heat shield, where we need to change the design by either strengthening the tile, or changing how big the gap is between tiles, or changing what’s underneath the tile.

“There are 100 different variables we could tweak, . . . but the only way to know exactly what we should be adjusting is to fly repeatedly and be able to examine the ship upon landing,” Musk said.

The goals of Flight 10, which remained largely unchanged from Flights 7, 8 and 9, focused on the performance of the Starship’s heat shield during and after reentry. Ahead of that, the Starship demonstrated a payload-dispenser system that is designed to deploy SpaceX’s large, next-generation Starlink satellites.

About 18.5 min. after liftoff, the Starship’s payload bay door slot opened, and the first of eight Starlink dummy satellites were released into suborbital space. SpaceX plans to launch batches of 60 Starlink Version 3 satellites on future Starship missions, with each flight adding 20 times the capacity of what a single Falcon 9 can deliver, launch commentator Dan Huot noted.

After the dummy satellites were deployed, one of the ship’s Raptor engines was momentarily restarted, a demonstration expected to pave the way for future orbital missions that require deorbit burns.

Flight 10’s launch was timed to position the Starship for a daylight descent and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Several tiles on the ship’s heat shield were removed to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry. SpaceX added multiple metallic tiles, including one with active cooling, to test alternative heat shield materials. The ship also was outfitted with functional catch fittings to provide thermal and structural performance data for future launch tower captures.

The Starship survived the intentionally stressing reentry profile but was not unscathed. A protective skirt around the engine bay was damaged, and a control flap partly melted near the hinge that attached it to the ship’s body. Nevertheless, the vehicle remained under control throughout its descent.

The Starship then lit its three center engines for a landing burn and hovered over the ocean and within view of a prepositioned camera on a buoy northwest of Australia. The ship slowly contacted the water, tipped over and exploded, as expected, bringing Flight 10 to a close.

The demonstration was SpaceX’s first full-duration Starship flight test since Flight 6 on Nov. 19, 2024, although not for lack of trying. After successful separation from Super Heavy boosters, Starship upper stages for Flights 7, 8 and 9—which took place on Jan. 16, March 6 and May 27, respectively—were prematurely lost for different reasons.

Flight 7 ended about 8.5 min. after launch due to fires in the Starship engine aft section triggered by propellant leaks from unexpected vibrations.

Flight 8 lasted 9 min. and 30 sec. due to an unrelated engine hardware failure that inadvertently caused propellants to mix and ignite. That set off a series of engine shutdowns and loss of the vehicle.

Flight 9 reached its intended trajectory, but fuel leaks caused the ship to lose attitude control, and it began to spin. The ship reentered the atmosphere in the wrong orientation and was destroyed during reentry.

SpaceX planned to return to flight a month later, but on June 18, the Starship being prepared to fly exploded on a test stand during fueling for a routine prelaunch static fire. The accident destroyed the vehicle and damaged the test stand and surrounding area.

Engineers determined the most probable cause was undetected damage to a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) in the Starship’s payload bay section. The failure of the COPV, which holds gaseous nitrogen for the Starship’s environmental control system, led to a structural failure that allowed propellants to mix and ignite.

SpaceX implemented several changes, including operating the COPVs at a reduced pressure. The company said it also added inspections and proof tests, updated its COPV acceptance criteria and developed a new nondestructive evaluation method to detect internal COPV damage.

Starship-Super Heavy flight tests began in April 2023. Musk said Starship refueling demonstrations would begin next year. “This is a great day for NASA and our commercial space partners,” NASA’s acting Administrator Sean Duffy wrote on X after the flight. “Congratulations to SpaceX on its Starship test.”