SpaceX fires up Starship spacecraft ahead of 11th test flight (video)

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SpaceX is continuous to gear up for the next flight of its Starship megarocket, which can be just around the nook.

The company performed a “static fire” test with its latest Starship higher stage lately, firing up its six Raptor engines while the vehicle remained anchored to the launch mount at SpaceX’s Starbase web site in South Texas.

The milestone, which SpaceX announced via X on Monday night (Sept. 22), is an element of the prep work for Starship’s 11th test flight. The company has already static-fired the Super Heavy first-stage booster that will fly on that mission.

SpaceX is developing Starship, the largest and most highly effective rocket ever constructed, to help humanity settle Mars and embark on other exploration duties. Both of its components — Super Heavy and the upper-stage spacecraft, identified as Starship or merely “Ship” — are designed to be absolutely and quickly reusable.

Starship has flown in its stacked configuration 10 instances to date, most lately on Aug. 26. That test launch was a success; both Super Heavy and Ship splashed down in their goal zones (the Gulf of Mexico and Indian Ocean, respectively), and Ship deployed eight dummy payloads into space as deliberate. That had never been executed before on a Starship flight.

Flight 10 was a bounce-back mission for Starship; SpaceX had misplaced Ship prematurely on the earlier three test flights, and another one of the upper-stage autos exploded on the test stand this past June.

SpaceX has not yet announced a goal launch date for Flight 11, which would be the closing mission of Starship’s current “Version 2” iteration.

The company will soon start flying Starship Version 3, an even greater vehicle that might be succesful of getting cargo and people to Mars. If all goes properly with the Version 3 test marketing campaign, the first fleet of uncrewed Starships might launch toward the Red Planet in late 2026, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said.