|
Only have a minute? Listen instead |
SpaceX conducted its first “static fire” engine test of a new version of Starship at Boca Chica/Starbase on Tuesday.
Ship 39, the vehicle tested on Tuesday, is the first example of the third and latest version of Starship, dubbed Starship V3. SpaceX plans to launch it atop Super Heavy booster B19 for Starship Flight 12.
The V3 iterations of Starship and Super Heavy are more powerful, with upgraded Raptor 3 engines, and slighter taller than their predecessors.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted on X on April 3 that Flight 12 was “4 to 6 weeks away,” or early to mid-May. That estimate represents the third in a series of delays related to Flight 12. On March 7, Musk predicted “Starship V3 first flight in about 4 weeks.” No reason has been given for the delays.
Version 2 of Starship was retired with the successful completion of Flight 11 on Oct. 13, ending with the controlled landings of a first-generation Super Heavy (B15) in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship (S38) in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX has been attempting to develop Starship as the Human Landing System (HLS) to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972 as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program. NASA awarded SpaceX a $4.4 billion contract for this purpose, the first $2.9 billion of it in 2021.
The crewed Artemis III mission using a Starship-based HLS has been pushed back multiple times due to delays in SpaceX’s development, however, and NASA announced in February that Artemis III — scheduled for a mid-2027 launch — was being reconfigured as a non-crewed mission “to test out systems and operational capabilities in low Earth orbit to prepare for an Artemis IV landing in 2028.”
NASA said the redesigned Artemis III mission will making an attempt at “rendezvous and docking with one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin” among other tests. Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is in direct competition with SpaceX for NASA contracts.
The changes to Artemis III were made following the February release of the 2025 NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Report, which found that Starship development “struggled during most of 2025,” though SpaceX’s last two flights of the year achieved the major goals set for Version 2 of Starship, which was a suborbital version of the orbital Starship V3.
The ASAP report also noted that achieving the necessary progress in developing and testing “a version of Starship that has not yet flown in time to support a human lunar landing mission within the next few years appears daunting and … probably not achievable.”