SpaceX wraps action-packed Starship V2 era as program moves to V3

Farewell, V2: SpaceX on Monday night sent Starship’s current configuration on one last test flight, in a mission that the company says hit all its key goals, moving the program into its next phase.

The nearly 400-foot-tall rocket lifted off from Starbase, Texas at 6:23 PM local time. The Super Heavy booster, reused from a March test, tried a new landing-burn profile, reigniting 13 engines before throttling down to five, and finally three for the final hover before completing a planned soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico roughly seven minutes after liftoff.

Meanwhile, Starship’s upper stage deployed eight mock Starlink satellite simulators, trialing a new “dynamic banking maneuver” profile that the company aims to use for future return-to-pad attempts at Starbase. The upper stage then splashed down in the Indian Ocean.  

This marked the final launch of the second-gen Starship and the first-gen Super Heavy variants. As with the previous test flight, engineers also experimented with the heat shield tiles on the upper stage, including selective removals and novel tile variations to gather reentry data.

SpaceX also duplicated Flight 10’s other key milestones: deploying simulators, and relighting one of Starship’s six Raptor engines on orbit.

Monday’s test formally started the program’s next phase: flying an upgraded prototype called V3, outfitted for in-orbit docking and propellant-transfer demonstrations, capabilities essential for crafts that aim to reach the Moon and Mars. SpaceX says V3 also incorporates structural changes and upgrades to the Raptor engine that are aimed at increasing lifting capacity, though the company did not share specific figures.

“This next iteration will be used for the first Starship orbital flights, operational payload missions, propellant transfer, and more as we iterate to a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle with service to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond,” the company said.

In parallel, SpaceX is upgrading Pad A at Starbase, and shifting launches to Pad B. The company is simultaneously working to build dual Starship launch pads in Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Starship is the most powerful rocket ever developed. It’s also the cornerstone of both NASA’s Artemis campaign and SpaceX’s plan to start deploying higher-capacity Starlink satellites.

Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy applauded the mission on X, saying it was “another major step toward landing Americans on the Moon’s south pole.”

SpaceX was awarded more than $4 billion to develop a human-rated variant of Starship, called the Human Landing System, for the Artemis 3 crewed mission currently scheduled for 2027. But meeting that date will require SpaceX to demonstrate increasingly complex milestones first, especially orbital docking and in-orbit propellant transfer.