SpaceX successfully launched its Super Heavy-Starship rocket on August 26, 2025, marking a significant milestone in its ongoing development. The mission, designated Starship Flight 10, took off from the company’s Starbase facility in Texas at 19:30 ET, following a two-day delay due to technical and weather-related issues.
This test flight was particularly crucial as it followed three consecutive failures earlier in the year. Despite some re-entry heating damage to the protective skirt around the engine bay of the upper stage and partial melting of a control flap, the rocket maintained control throughout the flight and achieved a powered splashdown in the Indian Ocean as planned. “Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting tenth flight test of Starship!” the company declared in a post on the social media platform X.
The Super Heavy first stage performed effectively, propelling the Starship out of the lower atmosphere before returning to execute an offshore splashdown. During the test, one of the engines was deliberately shut down to simulate a failure, yet the booster compensated well and landed safely in the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX employees in both Texas and California celebrated major milestones throughout the one-hour and six-minute test flight, relishing the success after a series of setbacks. The mission began with the ignition of the Super Heavy’s 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines, generating a staggering 16 million pounds of thrust—more than twice that of NASA’s Space Launch System and the historic Saturn V rocket.
The successful launch and flight did little to diminish concerns regarding the timeline for a moon lander variant of the Starship, which is being developed for NASA’s Artemis program. The planned lunar landing is scheduled for 2027, and experts worry that the current architecture may not be ready in time, particularly with the possibility of China conducting its own lunar missions before then.
The initial phases of the test flight proceeded smoothly. Although one of the booster’s engines shut down prematurely, the Super Heavy successfully propelled the Starship upper stage out of the lower atmosphere. After separation, the upper stage achieved a sub-orbital trajectory, a milestone not reached in previous test attempts.
Over the course of approximately 38 minutes, the Starship deployed eight Starlink satellite simulators and successfully reignited one of its six Raptor engines, verifying its capability to restart in space. During re-entry, the new heat shield tiles were tested against extreme temperatures, revealing some damage to the protective skirt and a partial melt of a control flap. Despite these issues, the vehicle behaved as expected, demonstrating its reliability throughout the flight.
Following its mission profile, the Starship was designed to return to a launch gantry for mid-air capture, a feat accomplished in earlier tests. However, for this flight, the vehicle was directed to splash down in the Indian Ocean, where a camera buoy captured images of the rocket’s descent. The Starship ultimately broke apart upon landing, an outcome anticipated by the design.
The success of this test is vital for SpaceX as it aims to refine the Starship for operational missions, including launching numerous Starlink satellites and eventually transporting settlers and equipment to Mars. It is equally important for NASA, which relies on a modified version of the Starship to send astronauts to the moon within the next few years.
The capability of the Super Heavy-Starship system to conduct rapid launch sequences and autonomously transfer cryogenic propellants in space introduces unprecedented challenges. Any failure during these operations could jeopardize missions and create hazardous debris.
Experts highlight that while SpaceX may eventually overcome these hurdles, the pressing question remains: can the company meet the 2027 lunar landing timeline? Current assessments indicate that achieving a crewed lunar mission within that window is highly ambitious, with many experts expressing skepticism about the feasibility of the current Human Landing System architecture.
“I think the folks you’ve talked to are accurate. We are not going to go ahead and get a crewed Starship to the moon by 2030, under any circumstances,” stated a senior engineer involved in the Artemis program. “That doesn’t mean they’ll never get there. It’s just too big of a technical leap to accomplish in the short time that we’ve got.”
As SpaceX continues to innovate, the outcome of the next phases in the Super Heavy-Starship program will be closely monitored, both by supporters and skeptics alike, as the company pushes forward in its quest for space exploration.
