Watch Reside as SpaceX Tries to Show Starship Isn’t a Complete Flop With Flight 10

SpaceX is gearing up for the tenth take a look at flight of its megarocket following a streak of failures which have forged doubt on Starship’s capacity to fly to Mars in 2026.

Starship is slated for lift-off on Sunday, August 24, throughout a launch window that opens at 7:30 p.m. ET. SpaceX not too long ago wrapped up investigations into the rocket’s earlier take a look at flight, which came about on Might 27 and ended with the car breaking up throughout reentry. This was the third Starship flight of 2025 and the newest in a collection of failures. For flight 10, SpaceX has built-in {hardware} and operational modifications to its rocket in an effort to extend its reliability, in accordance with the corporate.

Starship’s take a look at flight shall be broadcast stay on SpaceX’s website, in addition to the corporate’s X account. You too can tune in by the stay feed under.

Sunday’s take a look at flight will try related mission goals that went unfulfilled throughout earlier flights as a result of numerous anomalies. For the fourth time in a row, SpaceX will try a payload deployment take a look at. For this take a look at, the rocket will deploy 10 Starlink simulators, every related in measurement and weight to the corporate’s next-generation satellites. Slightly than remaining in orbit, these Starlinks are designed to comply with a suborbital trajectory and are anticipated to fritter away throughout reentry.

Throughout the upcoming take a look at flight, SpaceX won’t try and catch the rocket’s Tremendous Heavy booster on the launch mount. As a substitute, the booster will head on a trajectory to an offshore touchdown level within the Gulf of Mexico to check its touchdown burn. Throughout the descent, one of many booster’s three engines will shut down to check the power of a backup engine to take over. The booster will then use two middle engines for the ultimate touchdown burn, hovering briefly above the ocean earlier than dropping into the Gulf of Mexico.

For Starship’s higher stage, SpaceX has eliminated a number of tiles from its warmth protect to “stress-test susceptible areas throughout the car throughout reentry,” the corporate wrote. The tiles have been faraway from susceptible areas and sizzling spots that have been noticed throughout Starship’s sixth flight take a look at.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted SpaceX the inexperienced gentle for Starship’s upcoming flight after concluding the investigation into Flight 9. The investigation traced the mishap from the earlier flight to structural points that resulted in “a mixing of methane and liquid oxygen and subsequent ignition,” SpaceX wrote in a statement. To keep away from related points throughout upcoming flights, SpaceX mentioned it will decrease the booster’s descent angle to scale back aerodynamic forces and stop one other failure.

The corporate additionally addressed the explosion that came about on June 18 at SpaceX’s Massey facility close to Starbase. The explosion annihilated the Starship prototype that was imagined to fly on Flight 10. SpaceX traced the anomaly to wreck to a composite overwrapped stress vessel (COPV), which shops nitrogen in Starship’s payload bay. “To deal with the difficulty, COPVs on upcoming flights will function at a lowered stress with extra inspections and proof exams added previous to loading reactive propellants onto a car,” the corporate wrote.

Starship has had a tough run for the reason that starting of the 12 months. The rocket’s seventh take a look at flight in January ended with Starship’s upper stage exploding roughly eight-and-a-half minutes after launch. Starship’s higher stage met a similar fate during its eighth test flight in March when six of its 9 Raptor engines died in the course of the ascent burn. Throughout Starship’s most up-to-date take a look at flight in Might, the rocket additionally suffered a slew of failures. Though the car reached its deliberate velocity, a propellant leak led to lack of management, and it broke apart throughout reentry after failing to attain its mission goals.

SpaceX mentioned it has made a number of modifications to its rocket to keep away from one more failure throughout flight take a look at quantity 10, hoping that Starship lastly breaks its lengthy shedding streak.