SpaceX’s Starship Completes 10th Test Flight Successfully

SpaceX’s Starship Completes 10th Test Flight Successfully

The last time I reported on SpaceX’s Starship program, its Ship 36 experienced a catastrophic explosion at the company’s Starbase facility in Texas during preparations for the tenth test flight. The incident occurred while the vehicle was being loaded with liquid oxygen and methane fuel for a planned static fire test of its six Raptor engines.

However, on Tuesday, the tenth flight took off with great success.

SpaceX’s Starship megarocket took to the skies for the 10th time ever today (Aug. 26), on a bold test flight that marked a big bounceback from recent failures.

Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas today at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT; 6:30 p.m. local Texas time). That was two days later than originally planned; an issue with ground systems at Starbase forced a scrub on Sunday (Aug. 24), and bad weather caused another one on Monday (Aug. 25).

But it was worth the wait: Starship did everything SpaceX asked it to today, getting the giant vehicle back on track after a string of issues.

“That was absolutely incredible,” SpaceX Build Reliability Engineer Amanda Lee said during live launch commentary. “A huge congrats to all the teams here.”

BREAKING: SpaceX's Starship rocket just successfully performed a flip maneuver and splashed down on target in the Indian ocean! The ship survived reentry through Earth's atmosphere.

Congrats @SpaceX on a successful test flight! pic.twitter.com/PSIjmfKdbw

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 27, 2025

The Super Heavy booster separated after ascent. It then conducted a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, testing backup engine scenarios to simulate possible failures.

But the initial stages of the 10th Super Heavy-Starship test flight appeared to go smoothly. The 230-foot-tall Super Heavy booster propelled the Starship upper stage out of the dense lower atmosphere, separated, flipped around, and flew itself to a splashdown off the Texas Gulf Coast as planned.

The stage is designed to fly itself back to its launch gantry for a mid-air capture by giant mechanical arms, a feat pulled off three times during earlier testing.

But for Tuesday’s flight, the booster targeted the Gulf while flight controllers monitored how it performed when engines used for landing were deliberately shut down, forcing a switch to backups, to simulate failures. The stage appeared to perform smoothly all the way to splashdown.

The Starship upper stage, meanwhile, flew into a suborbital trajectory as planned, heading for a splashdown in the Indian Ocean 1 hour and 6 minutes after liftoff.

Still wild that @SpaceX can put a buoy with Starlink on it in the middle of the ocean and precisely land Starship next to it for the world to watch live 🚀 pic.twitter.com/171exVMqDU

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 27, 2025

There is currently no officially announced date for the next Starship test launch following the successful flight. SpaceX typically announces new launch windows several weeks in advance, and updates are expected soon given the ambitious plans for the Starship program.

…The company’s test schedule has remained aggressive, with launches often just months apart. During the test flights, engineers intentionally test the limits of the spacecraft, removing heat tiles in critical areas. That pace and design strategy is central to SpaceX’s iterative engineering process, which involves learning as they go, identifying problems, and making changes and improvements after each flight test.

Still, the company has a long way to go before NASA will give them a green light to carry humans to space aboard Starship. For that to happen, Starship and the Super Heavy booster must be certified by NASA during its “human-rating” process.

According to NASA, the human-rating process “is a critical certification process that validates the safety, reliability, and suitability of space systems—including orbiters, launch vehicles, rovers, spacesuits, habitats, and other crewed elements—for human use and interaction.”

Here’s hoping the #11 test is every bit as successful.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.