SpaceX launches Starship on most successful test mission of 2025. When is flight 11? Eric Lagatta and Brooke Edwards, USA TODAYAugust 27, 2025 at 11:57 PM SpaceX's Starship rocket soared to new heights for 2025, ending a streak of explosive failures for the Marsbound vehicle during its latest test f...
- - SpaceX launches Starship on most successful test mission of 2025. When is flight 11?
Eric Lagatta and Brooke Edwards, USA TODAYAugust 27, 2025 at 11:57 PM
SpaceX's Starship rocket soared to new heights for 2025, ending a streak of explosive failures for the Mars-bound vehicle during its latest test flight from Texas.
Billionaire Elon Musk and the company he founded in 2002 were in need of a win after three disappointing Starship missions in 2025 and one unexpected fiery mishap in June on the test stand before the upper stage vehicle was mounted to the lower-stage booster.
And that's exactly what the company got when the world's largest rocket launched Tuesday, Aug. 26, from SpaceX's Starbase headquarters in South Texas on its 10th flight test since April 2023. The highly anticipated launch, the vehicle's fourth flight of 2025 and first since May 27, finally took place after two mission scrubs – the first for a vehicle anomaly and the second due to weather.
Starship's tenth flight test pushed the limits and provided maximum excitement along the way → https://t.co/UIwbeGoo2B pic.twitter.com/W6fH3GCwuP
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 27, 2025
While Starship still has a long way to go in its development, the latest mission marks a significant step forward for a spacecraft intended to one day ferry NASA astronauts to the moon's surface and transport the first humans to Mars.
Here's everything to know about the Starship launch, referred to as flight 10, as well as when the megarocket could launch again.
16 PhotosSpaceX launches Starship on flight 10 from Starbase in South Texas. See photosSee Gallery
Was the Starship launch successful? Here's what happened with upper stage
Starship got off the ground right on time at 7:30 p.m. ET from SpaceX's sprawling Starbase – the complex that doubles as a Texas city and the company's headquarters near the U.S-Mexico border.
Starship, standing more than 400 feet tall when fully stacked, launches Tuesday, Aug. 26 from SpaceX's Starbase complex in South Texas on its tenth test flight since April 2023.
The upper stage, the vehicle known as Starship, separated from the rocket booster about three minutes into the flight to continue on its own on a suborbital trajectory.
Starship then hit two other objectives:
succeeding in deploying eight mock Starlink satellites in a key milestone that SpaceX has so far been unable to attempt on previous flights
reigniting one of its Raptor engines in space for the second time ever, a necessary maneuver to bring a vehicle back to the ground
Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting tenth flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/5sbSPBRJBP
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 27, 2025
Re-entering Earth's atmosphere about an hour into the mission over the Indian Ocean, Starship then fired its engines to make a controlled vertical landing on the ocean's surface west of Australia before exploding in a fireball. This time, though, the fiery demise was an expected outcome that was likely triggered by the vehicle's flight termination system.
Starship flight 10 landing: Booster makes splashdown
During three separate Starship launches since October, SpaceX has proven it's capable of returning and "catching" the massive spacecraft's rocket booster at its South Texas launch site.
But for the second time in a row, SpaceX had no plans to recover the booster, known as Super Heavy, as it instead sought to once again push its performance beyond what has so far been attempted.
Super Heavy has splashed down in the Gulf pic.twitter.com/LGozUAmLt8
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 26, 2025
Multiple landing burn tests were planned for Super Heavy, which was intended to perform a controlled flip after the upper stage separates in midair before it begins its descent. SpaceX pulled off the maneuver for the first time during the May flight test, which requires less propellant to be held in reserve and enables the rocket to carry a heavier payload.
The booster then completed several in-flight experiments before making a water landing off the Gulf of Mexico, which the U.S. government has renamed the Gulf of America.
When is Starship flight 11 launch date?
No launch date is set for Starship's next launch, which will be known as flight 11.
But following the previous May 27 flight test, Musk proclaimed on social media that the vehicle's next three launches would occur much faster than normal – at a cadence of one "every 3 to 4 weeks."
While that hasn't exactly happened quite yet, the U.S. government has handed SpaceX a few key wins that might ease the company's pathway to more frequent launches.
Most recently, President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier in August aimed at rolling back federal regulations on commercial spaceflight companies – a sign that private sector rocket companies like SpaceX remain crucial to U.S. spaceflight ambitions, even after a public falling out between Trump and Musk.
The move came a few months after the FAA, which licenses commercial rocket launches, approved in May for SpaceX to conduct as many as 25 Starship test flights a year. Starship launched just four times in 2024.
What is Starship? How big is Mars-bound rocket?
The Starship, standing 403 feet tall when fully stacked, is regarded as the world's largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever developed. When fully integrated, the launch system is composed of both a 232-foot Super Heavy rocket and the 171-foot upper stage Starship itself, the spacecraft where crew and cargo would ride.
Super Heavy alone is powered by 33 of SpaceX's Raptor engines that give the initial burst of thrust at liftoff. The upper stage Starship section is powered by six Raptor engines that will ultimately travel in orbit.
SpaceX is developing Starship to be a fully reusable transportation system, meaning the rocket and vehicle can return to the ground for additional missions.
In the years ahead, Starship is set to serve a pivotal role in future U.S. spaceflight. Starship is the centerpiece of Musk's vision of sending the first humans to Mars, and is also critical in NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon's surface. Musk aims to send the first uncrewed Starship to Mars in 2026. NASA, meanwhile, has designs on using Starship to ferry Artemis III astronauts from orbit to the lunar surface as early as 2027.
Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy congratulated SpaceX on social media site X, saying the mission "paves the way for the Starship Human Landing System that will bring American astronauts back to the Moon on Artemis III."
Starship launch improves on other 2025 flight tests that exploded
But until the most recent flight test, Starship had struggled in 2025 to repeat the successes of previous missions in 2024.
The flight test was previously delayed on June 18 when the Starship vehicle SpaceX assigned to the next flight, designated Ship 36, unexpectedly exploded while SpaceX was preparing it for launch. No one was hurt in the incident, which occurred as the Starship spacecraft was standing alone on the test stand being filled with cryogenic propellants for an engine test-firing before being mounted on top of the rocket booster.
The mishap, which SpaceX later referred to on its website as "a sudden energetic event," destroyed the spacecraft and ignited several fires that caused damage in the area surrounding the test stand.
The explosion was the latest fiery mishap SpaceX's Starship has encountered during – and, now, before – its flight tests in 2025.
Before flight 10, Starship's most recent demonstration came on May 27, when the spacecraft spun out of control roughly halfway through its flight and disintegrated in a fireball. Though Starship was unable to achieve its most important objectives, the distance the vehicle traveled far surpassed the previous 2025 flights in January and March, when Starship exploded within minutes.
SpaceX, though, has become known for its risk-tolerant philosophy when it comes to Starship's development. Musk has stressed that rapid and frequent testing, which sometimes leads to explosive ends, can still provide data that helps engineers improve the vehicle's design.
Contributing: Reuters
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What's next for SpaceX after successful Starship launch? Flight 11
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