SpaceX is building a fully reusable Starship to expand the human footprint beyond Earth.

As SpaceX’s envisioned multipurpose spacecraft, Starship will be capable of launching substantial payloads to any destination in the solar system, allow humans to live and work on Mars, perform lunar exploration for NASA, and conduct speedy intercontinental point-to-point transportation to destinations across Earth's surface.

Technical Specifications

Height: 50 m / 164 ft

Diameter: 9 m / 29.5 ft

Propellant Capacity: 1200 t / 2.6 Mlb

Thrust: 1500 tf / 3.2 Mlbf

Payload capacity: 100-150 t

Improvements for Flight 5

Based on Super Heavy’s precise landing in the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX will attempt to land the world’s largest and most powerful rocket booster on the launch pad using the Chopsticks on the Orbital Launch Tower.

“Unless something comes up that we think is problematic, we will try to bring the booster back and catch it with the giant mechazilla arms,” said Elon Musk regarding landing Super Heavy back on the launch pad.

He clarified that similar to Falcon 9’s return-to-launch-site landing profile, Super Heavy will target an area over the Gulf and maneuver itself to the launch site if all its systems are healthy.

As the booster performs the landing burn over the launch pad, the chopstick arms on the launch tower will close in and hold the booster using the lifting pins, the same way the booster was mounted on the launch pad before the launch. This will not only enable rapid launch cadence but will also save mass by eliminating the need for landing legs.

“It will take us a while to perfect capturing a rocket out of the air with mechazilla arms, but once we do it will save so much [mass],” said Elon.

Starship’s heat shield will also be getting a makeover as SpaceX will be switching to new hexagonal tiles, which Elon states are twice as robust as the current ones. These tiles will be laid on top of a secondary heat shield layer to ensure the Ship survives even if a tile is cracked or displaced. This layer, made of felt-based silicone, is ablative, meaning it absorbs the intense heat by gradually wearing away. While it may not be ideal for reuse, it will ensure the Ship returns without extensive damage.

With Starship, SpaceX is venturing into uncharted territory in rocket engineering. While the company has experience with suborbital recovery of boosters with Falcon 9, developing a fully and rapidly reusable heat shield on Starship is an extremely hard engineering challenge.

Elon reiterated the challenges they continue to face with the ceramic tiles, which can handle the temperatures but are difficult to ensure they remain on the Ship after multiple violent high-energy re-entries, saying, “[Starship heat shield] tiles are ceramics; they are like a coffee cup or dinner plate, so you’ve got a whole bunch of dinner plates stuck on the side of a rocket which is shaking like hell.”

SpaceX plans to iterate on Starship and Super Heavy via such integrated test flights. The end goal with this program is for both vehicles to require minimal repairs and increase the launch cadence to mirror an airline-like operation. It’ll reduce the launch costs, make it cheaper to explore space, and finally achieve SpaceX’s primary goal of establishing a base on the Moon and a city on Mars.

Flight Heritage

Integrated Flight Test 4

Starship’s fourth flight test launched with ambitious goals, attempting to go farther than any previous test before and begin demonstrating capabilities central to return and reuse of Starship and Super Heavy. The payload for this test was the data. Starship delivered.

On June 6, 2024, Starship successfully lifted off at 7:50 a.m. CT from Starbase in Texas and went on to deliver maximum excitement.

The Super Heavy booster lifted off successfully and completed a full-duration ascent burn.

Starship executed another successful hot-stage separation, powering down all but three of Super Heavy’s Raptor engines and successfully igniting the six second stage Raptor engines before separating the vehicles.

Following separation, the Super Heavy booster successfully completed its flip maneuver, boostback burn to send it towards the splashdown zone, and jettison of the hot-stage adapter.

The booster’s flight ended with a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico seven minutes and 24 seconds into the flight.

Starship's six second stage Raptor engines successfully powered the vehicle to space and placed it on the planned trajectory for coast.

Starship made a controlled reentry, successfully making it through the phases of peak heating and max aerodynamic pressure and demonstrating the ability to control the vehicle using its flaps while descending through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.

Starlink on Starship once again enabled real-time telemetry and live high-definition video throughout every phase of entry, with external cameras providing views all the way to the flight’s conclusion.

Flight 4 ended with Starship igniting its three center Raptor engines and executing the first flip maneuver and landing burn since our suborbital campaign, followed by a soft splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after launch.

Integrated Flight Test 3

On March 14, 2024, Starship successfully lifted off at 8:25 a.m. CT from Starbase in Texas and went on to accomplish several major milestones and firsts:

For the second time, all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy Booster started up successfully and completed a full-duration burn during ascent.

Starship executed its second successful hot-stage separation, powering down all but three of Super Heavy’s Raptor engines and successfully igniting the six second stage Raptor engines before separating the vehicles.

Following separation, the Super Heavy booster successfully completed its flip maneuver and completed a full boostback burn to send it towards its splashdown point in the Gulf of Mexico.

Super Heavy successfully lit several engines for its first ever landing burn before the vehicle experienced a RUD (that’s SpaceX-speak for “rapid unscheduled disassembly”). The booster’s flight concluded at approximately 462 meters in altitude and just under seven minutes into the mission.

Starship's six second stage Raptor engines all started successfully and powered the vehicle to its expected orbit, becoming the first Starship to complete its full-duration ascent burn.

While coasting, Starship accomplished several of the flight test’s additional objectives, including the opening and closing of its payload door (aka the pez dispenser,) and initiating a propellant transfer demonstration. Starship did not attempt its planned on-orbit relight of a single Raptor engine due to vehicle roll rates during coast. Results from these demonstrations will come after postflight data review is complete.

Starship went on to experience its first ever entry from space, providing valuable data on heating and vehicle control during hypersonic reentry. Live views of entry were made possible by Starlink terminals operating on Starship. - The flight test’s conclusion came during entry, with the last telemetry signals received via Starlink from Starship at approximately 49 minutes into the mission.

While teams review the data collected from this flight, Starship and Super Heavy vehicles are preparing for upcoming flights as SpaceX seeks to increase their launch cadence throughout the year.

This rapid iterative development approach has been the basis for all of SpaceX’s major innovative advancements, including Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink. Recursive improvement is essential as we work to build a fully reusable transportation system capable of carrying both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and ultimately travel to Mars and beyond.

Integrated Flight Test 2

On November 18th, 2023, Starship Super Heavy successfully lifted off at 7:02 AM CT from Starbase, Texas.

All 33 Raptor engines were successfully ignited and reached full thrust, lifting the largest launch system ever built. In contrast to its previous flight, the Raptor engines onboard the Super Heavy booster functioned as expected. This, combined with quicker thrust throttling to minimize contact with the pad, enabled Starship to lift off smoothly and pitch away from the launch site.

With thrust exceeding twice that of the Saturn V and surpassing NASA's Space Launch System, Starship Super Heavy followed its planned trajectory into space. After passing the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure, the vehicle achieved supersonic speed for the first time.

The previous test flight experienced multiple engine shutdowns before stage separation, but the lessons learned from that flight resulted in a flawless ascent profile. SpaceX addressed all the issues encountered during the first flight, and this launch marked the maiden test flight of several new technologies.

As Starship Super Heavy approached the stage separation point, all but the central three booster engines shut down in a staggered sequence at MECO (Most Engines Cut Off). While the Super Heavy booster continued to provide thrust, though significantly reduced, the six Raptor engines on Starship ignited, facilitating its separation from Super Heavy. Engine plasma exited from the booster’s skirt, in an additional ring specifically designed for this stage separation system — known as hot staging. This was the first time hot staging was performed and tested in-flight on an American rocket since the Titan fleet.

Rarely used by American launch vehicles, hot staging is common in Soviet-era Russian rockets like Soyuz since it simplifies the stage separation system, and enables more mass to orbit. SpaceX estimates that hot staging will increase Starship’s maximum payload to orbit by 10%.

Heat shields and skirtings on the booster helped protect it from Starship's fiery plume. Multiple-raptor engines on Super Heavy reignited as it steered away from Starship and began its boost-back burn. However, it was shortly terminated by the Autonomous Flight Termination system. The cause for this is still unknown, but it’s highly probable that all the required engines might not have reignited properly and the booster significantly deviated from its planned trajectory, leading to its automatic termination at an altitude of 90 kilometers (56 miles) over the Gulf of Mexico.

As it passed the Kármán line (100km) the vehicle became the most powerful rocket to ever make it to space.

Just short of the second stage cut-off, Starship lost all communications from the ground and experienced a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (big explosion).

Starship achieved a maximum altitude of ~150 kilometers (93.2 miles), and a velocity of ~24,000 kilometers per hour (~15,000 miles per hour), its highest ever. This second integrated flight test successfully demonstrated the highly dynamic stage separation system, booster boost-back burn, and all the mitigations that were in place after the first flight.

Post-launch, inspections of the pad revealed that work done to strengthen it, including the water-cooled steel plate, worked as expected and requires little to no refurbishment for the next launch.

Despite being a success in terms of an iterative development program, Starship Super Heavy did in fact explode, thereby falling short of its official objectives and immediately triggering an FAA anomaly review.

Integrated Flight Test 1

On April 20th, 2023, Starship lifted off at 9:33 a.m. CT from Starbase, Texas.

SpaceX took a significant step in the development of its rapidly reusable launch vehicle, Starship Super Heavy, by flying the beast to an altitude of 39km during its heart-stopping first fight. Did SpaceX fail to complete its larger objectives? Yes. Did they accelerate the program by testing systems and gathering flight data? Also, Yes.

The rocket cleared the pad and climbed as it continued to lose multiple engines and subsystems essential for the ascent. As more and more engines failed, Starship Super Heavy deviated from its planned trajectory before being stopped by the flight termination system over the Gulf of Mexico. Just before the massive vehicle self-destructed for safety about 4 minutes into the flight, SpaceX’s livestream explained that Starship’s visible cartwheels in the sky instead of the planned booster separation, “does not appear to be a nominal situation.”

Image and Starship 4 caption courtesy of SpaceX.

The Super Heavy booster is the first stage of SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship launch system and is the most powerful rocket booster ever built. It is designed to propel Starship toward orbit using 33 Raptor engines that burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen. These engines generate more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V, which previously held the record for the most powerful rocket ever flown.

Specs

Height: 71 m (232 ft)

Diameter: 9 m (29.5 ft)

Propellant Capacity: 3,400 t (7.5 million lb)

Thrust: 7,590 tf (16.7 million lbf)

The booster is designed to be fully reusable and return to the launch site rather than landing on a pad or drone ship. Following separation, Super Heavy performs a boostback burn to redirect itself toward Starbase, an entry burn to reduce heating and structural loads during atmospheric reentry, and a landing burn to precisely control its final descent. Instead of landing legs, SpaceX uses the launch tower’s mechanical arms, commonly known as the chopsticks, to catch the booster in midair. This approach reduces vehicle mass and supports faster turnaround between flights.

Several key systems enable this recovery method, including four large grid fins mounted near the top of the booster. These grid fins provide aerodynamic control during descent and are critical for aligning Super Heavy with the launch tower during the final seconds before capture. The booster also carries onboard flight computers, batteries, vents, and guidance systems that manage its autonomous return and landing sequence.

The first successful tower catch of a Super Heavy booster occurred during Starship Flight 5 on October 13th, 2024, proving the viability of the catch system on the very first attempt. This milestone was followed by another successful catch on Flight 7 on January 16th, 2025, which succeeded despite one engine failing to relight during the boostback burn. A third successful catch took place during Flight 8 on March 6th, 2025, when the booster returned safely to the launch tower after resolving a minor igniter issue prior to landing.

A major milestone followed with Starship Flight 9 on May 27th, 2025, which marked the first reuse of a Super Heavy booster. The booster assigned to Flight 9 had previously flown on Flight 7, making it the first Super Heavy to be reflown after a successful catch. While the booster was not recovered to the tower on this mission and instead flew a planned experimental profile that ended in a controlled splashdown attempt, the flight demonstrated the feasibility of booster reuse and expanded SpaceX’s reentry data set.

These missions collectively support SpaceX’s long term goal of achieving zero touch reflight, in which Super Heavy boosters can be reused with little to no refurbishment between launches. This capability is critical for enabling high launch cadence in support of lunar missions, Mars exploration, satellite deployment, and future commercial operations.

Photo courtesy of SpaceX.

Orbital Launch Pad A, often referred to as Pad 1, is the original and currently primary operational launch pad at Starbase, SpaceX’s privately developed launch site near Boca Chica, Texas. Located along the United States–Mexico border on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, Pad 1 was designed specifically to support the testing and launch of the Starship and Super Heavy launch system. Unlike traditional launch pads that rely on large flame trenches, Pad 1 is built around a massive steel orbital launch mount that elevates the Super Heavy booster above ground level, allowing engine exhaust to disperse outward beneath the vehicle.

Pad 1 supported Starship’s earliest integrated flight tests and played a critical role in validating SpaceX’s unconventional launch infrastructure. Following substantial damage during the first integrated flight test in April 2023, the pad underwent extensive reconstruction. A key upgrade was the installation of a high-capacity water-cooled steel flame deflector system, often referred to as the steel showerhead, designed to absorb extreme heat and acoustic energy during liftoff. These improvements significantly increased pad survivability and enabled a faster operational turnaround.

Adjacent to Pad 1 is the iconic launch and catch tower, commonly nicknamed Mechazilla. This tower is used to stack Starship onto the Super Heavy booster using large mechanical arms and is designed to eventually catch returning Super Heavy boosters after flight. Pad 1 has since supported multiple successful Starship launches and remains the cornerstone of Starbase operations as SpaceX continues refining the Starship system for orbital missions, lunar landings, and future Mars exploration.

Image courtesy of Tom Cross for Supercluster.

The Starbase catch tower is a ground structure built to recover the Super Heavy booster after flight. The tower supports a pair of large mechanical arms that are mounted on rails and can move vertically along the structure. These arms are used instead of traditional landing legs on the booster.

During recovery, Super Heavy performs a controlled return to the launch site. The booster aligns itself with the tower and descends between the arms. Load-bearing pins on the booster interface with the arms, allowing the vehicle to be physically supported by the tower once captured.

The catch system is intended to place the booster back at the launch site without requiring a separate landing pad. This approach reduces the need for landing legs and allows the booster to be positioned for ground operations after recovery.

Photo courtesy of SpaceX.

Starship is targeted to splashdown in the Indian Ocean. This flight path does not require a deorbit burn for reentry, maximizing public safety while still providing the opportunity to meet SpaceX's primary objective of a controlled Starship reentry.

Courtesy of SpaceX

High-quality prints selected from the Supercluster team’s spaceflight photography are now available in our shop.

Our prints are produced on 10 mil (0.25 mm) thick, slightly glossy, and fingerprint-resistant photo paper sourced from Japan.

Begin your collection with a shot seen around the world: Erik Kuna’s capture of a young space fan experiencing the liftoff of Starship Super Heavy.

Commemorate the historic inaugural launch of the Starship Super Heavy with the proper gear.

What else are you going to wear while visiting Starbase?

Purchase our Starship Prototype Tee by clicking here.

Starship Prototype Mission Patch

Mission patch for the SpaceX Starship prototype test program.

3.5" x 3.5"

Iron on backing.

Click here to purchase one from our shop. Supplies are limited.