The first launch of SpaceX’s upgraded Starship rocket is about a month away, CEO Elon Musk says.
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Starship V3 first flight in about 4 weeks pic.twitter.com/wvCkw5mjH0March 7, 2026
Starship V2 ended its service life during the Flight 11 launch last October. The mission continued a setback from a rocky start to 2025 for the rocket, which saw the ship’s upper stage explode during its first three missions that year, in January, March and May. The last two Starship flights last year were considered complete successes, but SpaceX hit another speed bump during the testing and preparations with V3 rocket hardware.
The first V3 Super Heavy booster suffered an accident at SpaceX’s test stand in November, delaying the upgraded model’s debut by several months as a new booster was assembled. Meanwhile, SpaceX has nearly completed construction of the second launch pad at its Starbase manufacturing and testing facility in South Texas, where the company plans to begin test operations of the Flight 12 booster “in the coming days,” the company said in a post from March 9 on X.
The V3 Starship upper stage for Flight 12, called Ship 39, also recently completed a round of tests to qualify the vehicle ahead of its upcoming launch.
“Over several days, engineers tested the vehicle’s redesigned propellant system and its structural strength, including squeeze tests to mimic the forces of future ship captures,” SpaceX said in a March 7. post on X.
Ship 39 cryosafe operations completed, the first campaign with a next generation Starship V3. Over several days, engineers tested the vehicle’s redesigned propellant system and its structural strength, including squeeze tests to mimic the forces of future ship captures pic.twitter.com/aFtCYIqwLhMarch 8, 2026
Starship is the first ever launch vehicle designed for full reusability. Its Super Heavy booster has completed three returns to the Starbase pad, where the chopstick-like arms of SpaceX’s “Mechazilla” launch tower catch the booster out of the air. Completion of the site’s second pad and tower gives SpaceX the ability to return Ship as well, for the upper stage’s first-ever airborne capture and recovery.
The ability to land and relaunch Starship is critical to SpaceX, which is contracted to design a version of the ship’s upper stage as the lunar lander for NASA’s The Artemis program. The company had originally been tasked with providing a Starship lander for a crew mission the moon on Artemis 3 in 2028, but a recent reshuffle of NASA’s Artemis mission roadmap has tightened the timeline.
NASA now plans to launch Artemis 3 in 2027. The mission will fly to low earth orbitwhere Orion, the Artemis crew capsule, will conduct rendezvous and docking maneuvers with one or both of the Artemis lunar landers.
In addition to Starship, NASA chose Blue origin‘s Blue moon landers to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface on future Artemis missions. And, as part of the Artemis restructuring, NASA has indicated a willingness to fly Orion with whichever lander is available once Artemis 3 is ready for launch. Should only one of these vehicles be worthy of space when the time comes, it is likely that the competitor will miss out on the opportunity to perform the program’s first crewed landing, which is now expected on Artemis 4.
