{"id":43820,"date":"2025-08-25T22:30:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T14:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/time-is-running-out-for-spacex-to-make-a-splash-with-second-gen-starship\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T22:30:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T14:30:42","slug":"time-is-running-out-for-spacex-to-make-a-splash-with-second-gen-starship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/time-is-running-out-for-spacex-to-make-a-splash-with-second-gen-starship\/","title":{"rendered":"Time is running out for SpaceX to make a splash with second-gen Starship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>STARBASE, Texas\u2014A beehive of aerospace technicians, construction workers, and spaceflight fans descended on South Texas this weekend in advance of the next test flight of SpaceX\u2019s gigantic Starship rocket, the largest vehicle of its kind ever built.<\/p>\n<p style=\"\">Towering 404 feet (123.1 meters) tall, the rocket was supposed to lift off during a one-hour launch window beginning at 6:30 pm CDT (7:30 pm EDT; 23:30 UTC) Sunday. But SpaceX called off the launch attempt about an hour before liftoff to investigate a ground system issue at Starbase, located a few miles north of the US-Mexico border.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX didn\u2019t immediately confirm when it might try again to launch Starship, but it could happen as soon as Monday evening at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>It will take about 66 minutes for the rocket to travel from the launch pad in Texas to a splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. You can watch the test flight live on SpaceX\u2019s official website. We\u2019ve also embedded a livestream from Spaceflight Now and LabPadre below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oZJ0RWsL6ws?si=xOtRSd6xonuq98qQ\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This will be the 10th full-scale test flight of Starship and its Super Heavy booster stage. It\u2019s the fourth flight of an upgraded version of Starship conceived as a stepping stone to a more reliable, heavier-duty version of the rocket designed to carry up to 150 metric tons, or some 330,000 pounds, of cargo to pretty much anywhere in the inner part of our Solar System.<\/p>\n<p>But this iteration of Starship, known as Block 2 or Version 2, has been anything but reliable. After reeling off a series of increasingly successful flights last year with the first-generation Starship and Super Heavy booster, SpaceX has encountered repeated setbacks since debuting Starship Version 2 in January.<\/p>\n<p>,<\/p>\n<p>Now, there are just two Starship Version 2s left to fly, including the vehicle poised for launch this week. Then, SpaceX will move on to Version 3, the design intended to go all the way to low-Earth orbit, where it can be refueled for longer expeditions into deep space.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"ars-wp-img-shortcode id-2113530 align-fullwidth\">\n<p>              <img width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_8879-copy.jpg\" class=\"fullwidth full\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_8879-copy.jpg 2000w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_8879-copy-640x427.jpg 640w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_8879-copy-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_8879-copy-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_8879-copy-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_8879-copy-980x653.jpg 980w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_8879-copy-1440x960.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\"><\/p>\n<p>              A closer look at the top of SpaceX\u2019s Starship rocket, tail number Ship 37, showing some of the different configurations of heat shield tiles SpaceX wants to test on this flight.<\/p>\n<p>                  Credit:<br \/>\n                                      Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Starship\u2019s promised cargo capacity is unparalleled in the history of rocketry. The privately developed rocket\u2019s enormous size, coupled with SpaceX\u2019s plan to make it fully reusable, could enable cargo and human missions to the Moon and Mars. SpaceX\u2019s most conspicuous contract for Starship is with NASA, which plans to use a version of the ship as a human-rated Moon lander for the agency\u2019s Artemis program. With this contract, Starship is central to the US government\u2019s plans to try to beat China back to the Moon.<\/p>\n<p>Closer to home, SpaceX intends to use Starship to haul massive loads of more powerful Starlink Internet satellites into low-Earth orbit. The US military is interested in using Starship for a range of national security missions, some of which could scarcely be imagined just a few years ago. SpaceX wants its factory to churn out a Starship rocket every day, approximately the same rate Boeing builds its workhorse 737 passenger jets.<\/p>\n<p>Starship, of course, is immeasurably more complex than an airliner, and it sees temperature extremes, aerodynamic loads, and vibrations that would destroy a commercial airplane.<\/p>\n<p>For any of this to become reality, SpaceX needs to begin ticking off a lengthy to-do list of technical milestones. The interim objectives include things like catching and reusing Starships and in-orbit ship-to-ship refueling, with a final goal of long-duration spaceflight to reach the Moon and stay there for weeks, months, or years. For a time late last year, it appeared as if SpaceX might be on track to reach at least the first two of these milestones by now.<\/p>\n<p>,<\/p>\n<figure class=\"ars-wp-img-shortcode id-2113528 align-fullwidth\">\n<p>              <img width=\"900\" height=\"1200\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4827.jpg\" class=\"fullwidth full\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4827.jpg 900w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4827-640x853.jpg 640w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4827-768x1024.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><\/p>\n<p>              The 404-foot-tall (123-meter) Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster stand on SpaceX\u2019s launch pad. In the foreground, there are empty loading docks where tanker trucks deliver propellants and other gases to the launch site.<\/p>\n<p>                  Credit:<br \/>\n                                      Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Instead, SpaceX\u2019s schedule for catching and reusing Starships, and refueling ships in orbit, has slipped well into next year. A Moon landing is probably at least several years away. And a touchdown on Mars? Maybe in the 2030s. Before Starship can sniff those milestones, engineers must get the rocket to survive from liftoff through splashdown. This would confirm that recent changes made to the ship\u2019s heat shield work as expected.<\/p>\n<p>Three test flights attempting to do just this ended prematurely in January, March, and May. These failures prevented SpaceX from gathering data on several different tile designs, including insulators made of ceramic and metallic materials, and a tile with \u201cactive cooling\u201d to fortify the craft as it reenters the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>The heat shield is supposed to protect the rocket\u2019s stainless steel skin from temperatures reaching 2,600\u00b0 Fahrenheit (1,430\u00b0 Celsius). During last year\u2019s test flights, it worked well enough for Starship to guide itself to an on-target controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, halfway around the world from SpaceX\u2019s launch site in Starbase, Texas.<\/p>\n<p>But the ship lost some of its tiles during each flight last year, causing damage to the ship\u2019s underlying structure. While this wasn\u2019t bad enough to prevent the vehicle from reaching the ocean intact, it would cause difficulties in refurbishing the rocket for another flight. Eventually, SpaceX wants to catch Starships returning from space with giant robotic arms back at the launch pad. The vision, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, is to recover the ship, quickly mount it on another booster, refuel it, and launch it again.<\/p>\n<p>If SpaceX can accomplish this, the ship must return from space with its heat shield in pristine condition. The evidence from last year\u2019s test flights showed engineers had a long way to go for that to happen.<\/p>\n<p>,<\/p>\n<figure class=\"ars-wp-img-shortcode id-2113529 align-fullwidth\">\n<p>              <img width=\"1800\" height=\"1350\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4820.jpg\" class=\"fullwidth full\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4820.jpg 1800w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4820-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4820-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4820-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4820-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4820-980x735.jpg 980w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_4820-1440x1080.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px\"><\/p>\n<p>              Visitors survey the landscape at Starbase, Texas, where industry and nature collide.<\/p>\n<p>                  Credit:<br \/>\n                                      Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>The Starship setbacks this year have been caused by problems in the ship\u2019s propulsion and fuel systems. Another Starship exploded on a test stand in June at SpaceX\u2019s sprawling rocket development facility in South Texas. SpaceX engineers identified different causes for each of the failures. You can read about them in our previous story.<\/p>\n<p>Apart from testing the heat shield, the goals for this week\u2019s Starship flight include testing an engine-out capability on the Super Heavy booster. Engineers will intentionally disable one of the booster\u2019s Raptor engines used to slow down for landing, and instead use another Raptor engine from the rocket\u2019s middle ring. At liftoff, 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines will power the Super Heavy booster off the pad.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX won\u2019t try to catch the booster back at the launch pad this time, as it did on three occasions late last year and earlier this year. The booster catches have been one of the bright spots for the Starship program as progress on the rocket\u2019s upper stage floundered. SpaceX reused a previously flown Super Heavy booster for the first time on the most recent Starship launch in May.<\/p>\n<p>The booster landing experiment on this week\u2019s flight will happen a few minutes after launch over the Gulf of Mexico east of the Texas coastline. Meanwhile, six Raptor engines will fire until approximately T+plus 9 minutes to accelerate the ship, or upper stage, into space.<\/p>\n<p>The ship is programmed to release eight Starlink satellite simulators from its payload bay in a test of the craft\u2019s payload deployment mechanism. That will be followed by a brief restart of one of the ship\u2019s Raptor engines to adjust its trajectory for reentry, set to begin around 47 minutes into the mission.<\/p>\n<p>If Starship makes it that far, that will be when engineers finally get a taste of the heat shield data they were hungry for at the start of the year.<\/p>\n<p><em>This story was updated at 8:30 pm EDT after SpaceX scrubbed Sunday\u2019s launch attempt.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>STARBASE, Texas\u2014A beehive of aerospace technicians, construction workers, and spaceflight fans descended on South Texas this weekend in advance of the next test flight of SpaceX\u2019s gigantic Starship rocket, the largest vehicle of its kind ever built. Towering 404 feet (123.1 meters) tall, the rocket was supposed to lift off during a one-hour launch window [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}