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SpaceX’s Starship will launch on its 11th test flight from Starbase, Texas, on October 13, 2025. | Credit: SpaceX
The largest and most powerful rocket ever built is about to get even bigger.
On Monday (October 13) SpaceX launched the 11th test flight of its Starship mega-rocket, sending the 400-foot-tall vehicle aloft from its Starbase in South Texas.
The suborbital flight was a great success. Both Starship‘s elements – the Super Heavy booster and the Starship (or ‘Ship’ for short) upper stage – returned to Earth for precise splashdowns. The ship also managed to reignite one of its engines in space and deploy eight dummy charges.
Flight 11 was a big moment for the Starship program, and not just because everything went so well. It was also a swan song, the final launch of the “Version 2” variant of the vehicle.
“Focus now turns to the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy, with multiple vehicles currently actively being built and preparing for testing,” SpaceX wrote in a Rounding station for Flight 11.
“This next iteration will be used for Starship’s first orbital flights, operational payload missions, propellant transfers and more as we iterate toward a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle with service to orbit. the moonMars and beyond,” the company added.
That next iteration is Starship Version 3, which will be about 5 feet taller than its predecessor. V3 will look a lot like V2, but there will be major differences “under the hood,” SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said during the Flight 11 launch webcast on Monday.
For example, the V3 ship’s propulsion system has been overhauled to accommodate Raptor 3, a new, more powerful version of the engine that powers both of Starship’s stages. (Super Heavy has 33 Raptors and Ship has six.)
“We’re also getting energy storage upgrades and numerous avionics changes – a lot of things that will enable longer duration missions,” Huot said.
“One notable thing you’ll see on the outside are these new docking adapters, which we’ll use when we bring two spacecraft together for propellant transfer,” he added. “That’s a core capability of Starship that we’re going to demonstrate next year.”
Indeed, fuel transfer in space is a crucial part of any spacecraft mission. Send the upper stages bound for the moon or Mars will launch with a minimal amount of propellant on board (to save mass for payloads) and will therefore need to rendezvous with multiple “tanker” ships in orbit to refuel.
The V3 Super Heavy, meanwhile, features a redesigned fuel transfer tube, a giant metal structure that channels cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen to the booster’s Raptor engines.
“New boosters will also have an integrated hot stage, much more ventilation space, and it is designed to be completely reusable,” Huot said. (The hot phase marks the intersection of Super Heavy and Ship; the “hot” part refers to the fact that Ship starts firing its engines before it has completely separated from the booster.)
The V3 Super Heavy will also have just three lattice fins – the waffle-like structures that help the booster steer its way back to Earth for precise touchdowns – instead of the V2’s four.
“However, they are 50% bigger – much stronger,” Huot said. “They also get used to lifting and catching vehicles.”
The lifting and catching is done by the “chopstick” arms of the Starship launch tower. These arms lift Ship and Super Heavy onto the launch pad, and they also catch both vehicles as they return home after takeoff. (SpaceX has conducted three catching chopsticks with Super Heavy so far, but haven’t tried it with Ship yet.)
All 11 Starship test flights have lifted off from Starbase’s Orbital Launch Mount 1. However, that platform will remain on hiatus for a while as it is overhauled to accommodate Starship V3.
“Among other things, we’re installing a new orbital launch pad, a new flame trench system and upgrading the chopsticks for future captures,” Jake Berkowitz, a SpaceX chief propulsion engineer, said during Monday’s launch webcast. “So until that is complete, we will be conducting launches from Pad 2, which will come online very soon.”
Related stories:
– SpaceX launches giant Starship rocket to the moon and Mars during its 11th test flight (video)
— Starship and Super Heavy explained
– Spaceship Mars rocket met ‘every major objective’ during epic Flight 10 test launch, SpaceX says
Starship V3 will be able to fly to Mars and may do so next year if tests continue to go well: SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said the company would like to have one small fleet of unmanned spaceships to the Red Planet on the next occasion, which will take place in late 2026. (Earth and Mars only properly align once every 26 months for interplanetary missions.)
In the long term, however, SpaceX plans to rely on an even bigger and more powerful spaceship – one that stands a whopping 142 meters tall and carries 42 Raptors instead of the current 39. This V4 iteration is expected to debut in 2027, Musk said.
2027 could be a milestone year for both SpaceX and NASA. It is the time when the agency wants to launch its program Artemis 3 mission, which will land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the moon Apollo era. The lunar lander for this epic mission will be an upper stage of a spaceship.
