SpaceX is gearing up for its next test flight of the Starship megarocket on Tuesday—a crucial step for founder Elon Musk’s ambitious plans to reach Mars. This comes after the last two Starship launches ended in dramatic fiery explosions.
The launch window opens at 6:30 p.m. (2330 GMT) from SpaceX’s Starbase facility near a small Texas village that recently became an official city, also named Starbase.
Towering 403 feet (123 meters) tall, Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, embodying Musk’s vision to make humanity a multiplanetary species. NASA is also counting on a Starship variant as the crewed lander for Artemis 3, the mission aimed at returning astronauts to the Moon.
However, SpaceX faces mounting pressure after previous tests saw the upper stages explode spectacularly, showering debris over Caribbean islands and disrupting air traffic.
Despite these setbacks, SpaceX remains confident that its bold, iterative testing approach—key to its success in commercial spaceflight—will pay off. The company acknowledges, though, that progress “won’t always come in leaps.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, SpaceX is reallocating staff and resources toward the Starship program to prepare for a potential Mars mission as early as next year.
On the upside, SpaceX has successfully demonstrated three times the ability to catch the Super Heavy booster with the massive robotic arms on its launch tower—a complex maneuver critical for rapid reusability and cost reduction.
For Tuesday’s ninth flight, SpaceX will reuse a Super Heavy booster for the first time. Unlike previous attempts, it will not try to catch the booster but will instead let it splash down safely in the Gulf of Mexico. The upper stage will once again attempt a long-distance flight, aiming to land in the Indian Ocean.
In a new development, SpaceX plans to deploy mock Starlink satellites as payload during this flight; these are expected to burn up on reentry.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has expanded the airspace closure zone to 1,600 nautical miles east of the launch site to ensure safety, coordinating with authorities in the UK, Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Mexico, and Cuba.
The FAA recently approved increasing the number of annual launches from five to 25, ruling that the rise would not harm the environment—despite concerns from conservation groups about potential risks to sea turtles and shorebirds.