SpaceX eyes mid-March for first test of upgraded Starship rocket

The delayed archetypal trial of SpaceX’s upgraded Starship rocket is present slated for mid-March, according to a post from CEO Elon Musk connected his societal media tract X.

This 3rd mentation of Starship, oregon V3, is larger and much powerful. Crucially, the institution plans to usage Starship V3 to motorboat its next-generation Starlink satellites, which volition beryllium susceptible of faster information speeds but measurement much and are larger. It’s besides the archetypal mentation of the rocket that is meant to dock with different Starships successful Earth orbit, a capableness the institution needs successful bid to scope the satellite oregon Mars.

This each comes arsenic SpaceX is racing toward an IPO aboriginal this year, and nether unit from the Trump medication to instrumentality U.S. astronauts to the aboveground of the satellite earlier the extremity of his 2nd term. Starship, the astir almighty rocket ever developed, is presently a cardinal portion of NASA’s ngo to fulfill that goal.

SpaceX was making advancement toward a motorboat of Starship V3 successful precocious 2025. But successful November, the booster signifier suffered an detonation during investigating that blew retired an full broadside of the alloy rocket. The institution said it was performing “gas strategy unit testing” erstwhile the detonation happened, but has yet to connection a much elaborate breakdown of what went wrong.

The institution has been hoping to determination connected from the 2nd mentation of Starship, which was a mixed bag. It was capable to successfully scope orbit with Starship V2, deploy dummy versions of the next-generation Starlink satellites, and drawback aggregate booster stages aft they returned to the launchpad.

But Starship V2 besides suffered a fig of explosions and setbacks of its own. Some of those came arsenic a effect of SpaceX’s developmental approach, which involves pushing the trial vehicles to — oregon past — their bounds and past iterating based connected what the institution learns. Others were much unexpected, similar erstwhile 1 of the Starship vehicles that sits atop the booster signifier erupted successful a monolithic fireball during ground investigating past June.

SpaceX has travel to predominate the planetary motorboat marketplace implicit the past decade, and it is relying connected Starship to support that dominance. But contention is creeping successful astatine the edges. Jeff Bezos’ abstraction institution Blue Origin launched its archetypal mega-rocket, known arsenic New Glenn, for the archetypal clip successful January 2025 and again successful November. The institution launched its inaugural commercialized payload for NASA connected that 2nd formation and besides completed the archetypal landing of its booster stage.

Blue Origin is readying a 3rd motorboat of New Glenn in precocious February and hopes to nonstop its ain lunar lander to the satellite sometime aft that. While New Glenn is smaller than Starship, Blue Origin revealed precocious past twelvemonth that it is processing a larger version of the conveyance that much straight competes with SpaceX’s super-heavy rocket.