SpaceX Prepares for Critical Test Flight with Starship

Metaverse Planet August 25, 2025Last Updated: November 3, 2025

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Elon Musk’s giant rocket, Starship, will undergo its most comprehensive tests to date in its tenth attempt. The mission plans for risky maneuvers for both the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage.

SpaceX has begun the countdown for the new Starship test flight from its Starbase facility in South Texas.

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“Build-Fly-Fix-Repeat”

The last flight took place about three months ago and witnessed a historic success. As you may recall, a Super Heavy rocket was reused for the first time. However, the mission ended in disappointment when the upper stage Starship disintegrated during atmospheric re-entry, and the Super Heavy stage exploded during a landing attempt in the Gulf of Mexico. Following this, another Starship prepared for Flight 10 exploded on the ground during a static firing, rendering the test stand unusable.

While the company’s “build-fly-fix-repeat” philosophy yields significant data with each flight, the losses of the upper stage raise questions about when Starship will be ready to carry commercial payloads and NASA missions. On the other hand, SpaceX has made significant progress since its first flight in April 2023. By re-flying a booster in May, it proved that rapid reusability is possible. However, success has not yet been achieved in the main goal of safely recovering and re-flying the upper stage.

The financial dimension is also growing. SpaceX announced that it has invested more than $7.5 billion in its Starbase facility in Texas and the Starship program to date, and has submitted a $1.8 billion spending plan for new launch pads in Florida.

NASA is also one of the biggest stakeholders in this process. The agency has two separate Starship contracts worth $4 billion to land astronauts on the Moon as part of the Artemis program. For this, SpaceX needs to demonstrate success not only in launch and re-entry but also in critical areas such as heat shield technology, in-orbit cryogenic fuel transfer, and landing on the lunar surface. The target date for the Artemis 3 mission is mid-2027.

According to Bloomberg, many engineers from the Falcon 9 team have been transferred to the Starship program to achieve these goals. The company sees Starship as a critical vehicle not only for journeys to the Moon and Mars but also for launching larger and higher-capacity Starlink satellites.

What are the goals for the 10th test?

At approximately 120 meters tall, Starship holds the title of the most powerful rocket ever built with its 33 Raptor engines. In the flight planned for the coming hours, the Super Heavy is scheduled to make a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico, and the upper stage in the Indian Ocean.

However, these are the main objectives. Various other tests will also take place during the flight. The lower stage, Super Heavy, will perform a series of experimental maneuvers after liftoff. Multiple landing burns will be attempted, and different engine configurations will be tested. In the final stage, one of the three center engines will be deliberately shut down to measure the landing capability with redundant engines. This will be followed by a hover attempt over the ocean with only two center engines. It will then land in the Gulf of Mexico.

The upper stage, Starship, will carry 8 Starlink models inside. These will be the size of the next-generation Starlink satellites and will be destroyed upon re-entering the atmosphere without reaching orbit. Additionally, a re-ignition of a single Raptor engine in space is planned. Different experiments will also be conducted during re-entry. Some heat shield tiles have been intentionally removed, and alternative metal tiles (including an actively cooled version) will be tested. Furthermore, the rear flaps will be deliberately stressed under maximum aerodynamic load to measure their performance at limit values.