The most powerful rocket ever built is on the verge of its biggest — and riskiest — test yet

Steve Nesius/Reuters

People near the sandy shores of Texas’ southernmost coastline are accustomed to the earth-shattering roar of the most powerful rocket ever made: Since 2023, various prototypes of SpaceX’s Starship have taken flight from the area 13 times — with nearly half ending in some form of unintended explosion.

But the stakes are about to get even higher.

On Monday, SpaceX will attempt to launch Starship to orbit for the first time, allowing it to deploy the inaugural batch of a new generation of Starlink internet satellites. Liftoff is expected during a 75-minute launch window that will open at 8:15 a.m. ET.

If successful, Monday’s test flight could mark a monumental step forward — signifying that Starship may soon leave its test flight phase and enter full operation.

As Starship crosses that threshold, the ripple effects for the broader space industry are expected to be seismic.

Starship is set to deploy a host of new space-based technologies, including the upgraded Starlink satellites designed to boost the capacity of SpaceX’s global internet business and orbital data centers that CEO Elon Musk hopes will power energy-sucking AI models.

The promises only grow bolder from there: Starship has a multibillion-dollar contract to carry NASA astronauts to the moon’s surface — perhaps for the first time since the Apollo program — amid a new space race with China. And Musk continues to harp on his long-shot vision of using the gargantuan launch vehicle to create a self-sustaining city on Mars.

Since Starship test flights began, dating back to brief “hop” tests in 2019, those goals have seemed far beyond the horizon. But Monday’s flight, if successful, will mark the beginning of a new phase in the vehicle’s development — and introduce a host of new risks.

For the past 13 test flights, SpaceX intentionally placed Starship in a “passively safe suborbital trajectory,” the company acknowledged in a blog post . This meant that “even if control over the spacecraft was completely lost, it was already on a path to reenter the atmosphere and splash down in a pre-determined location.”

As Starship attempts to reach orbit for the first time, the vehicle will lose that safety net. It will be traveling at such high speeds and at a precise trajectory that it will enter free fall around the planet, meaning that— if it loses control — it can’t be easily dragged back down to Earth.

Reaching orbit will offer Starship a dazzling array of new possibilities, perhaps allowing it to deploy functional satellites for the first time as well as pave the way for future exploration deeper into space.

But missteps pose new threats. SpaceX has said Starship will fly well below crewed space stations, noting the ship’s altitude will be about 171 miles (275 kilometers), while the International Space Station orbits around 200 miles (400 kilometers) and China’s Tiangong station operates above 210 miles (340 kilometers). However, if Starship loses control while in orbit, the rocket could collide with active satellites or other valuable equipment.

That’s why, the company said it may abort a planned engine burn — keeping Starship on a suborbital flight path — if there are any hints of malfunction in the early minutes of Monday’s flight.

“There’s so many things that can go wrong,” said Joseph Gonzalez, an associate professor of practice in aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois. “With your propellant systems — maybe you have a leak, you might have a freeze over of one of your bows, so maybe your engines are not igniting. Then you essentially just have a dead object that’s in orbit that can pose a risk.”

Meanwhile, SpaceX is grappling with a host of engineering challenges, even as it sets the stage for this unprecedented vehicle to reshape the launch industry and, possibly, humanity’s future in the cosmos.

Monday’s mission, while expected to deploy operational satellites for the first time, is still considered a test flight. And SpaceX will actively be vetting recent changes it has made to the vehicle.

During the last test mission in July , the Super Heavy rocket booster — which gives Starship its first burst of power off the launchpad — was only able to relight eight of its 13 engines during the moments before it practiced an upright landing into the Gulf.

That problem didn’t affect the mission’s overall success, but making a controlled, safe touchdown is crucial to Starship’s long-term capabilities, because the company hopes to recapture the rocket back at its launch tower in order to refly the rocket repeatedly.

SpaceX said it has made several tweaks, including “hardware modifications to improve filtering to the engines and software changes to enhance relight reliability,” to solve the Super Heavy booster’s lingering engine issues. Nevertheless, Super Heavy will not return to dry land but once again attempt a practice landing over the ocean.

Meanwhile, the upper Starship spacecraft, which is also referred to as the “ship,” will power up its own engines and continue flying on a suborbital trajectory. As a safety precaution, SpaceX said it will then spend about 20 minutes vetting the spacecraft, ensuring the systems that can guide it back for a safe landing are working — and that the backups to those systems are functioning — before firing up the ship’s engines once more to enter Earth orbit.

Most of Starship’s test flights so far have run just over an hour, and all were flown on a suborbital trajectory. But on Monday, the spacecraft may stay aloft for nearly 10 hours, deploying its batch of 26 Starlink satellites and completing six laps around the planet.

The ship will then attempt to guide itself safely back through the atmosphere and complete an upright, controlled landing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile.

As with the Super Heavy booster, the ship’s controlled descent is crucial — aiming to pave the way for future attempts to land the vehicle back in the arms of its launch tower so it can later be flown again.

SpaceX has never attempted this move before. Musk previously hinted that SpaceX might attempt such a maneuver on Monday’s test flight, but the company ultimately opted against doing so.

“What we’re most concerned about is if the ship were to break up over land and rain debris on people,” Musk said during an appearance this month at the All-In Summit , a technology conference. “Our popularity would diminish very rapidly.”

(Starship spacecraft abruptly exploded and rained debris over and near populated areas in Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas, respectively, during two consecutive test flights in 2025. Some residents were furious.)

The upper portion of a two-stage, orbital rocket has never before been recaptured and flown again, and much remains to be seen.

The ship must endure grueling temperatures — perhaps topping 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,370 Celsius) — as it plunges back into Earth’s atmosphere. And SpaceX is still tweaking the special coating on the spacecraft’s exterior, called the heat shield, that’s meant to keep the vehicle intact during reentry.

“When you’re going orbital, you’re going to subject your heat shield to even slightly hotter temperatures than with suborbital test flights,” Gonzalez said. “So this next flight will tell us a lot. Reentry will be an even more harsh experience than what we previously had on these launches.”

Gonzalez noted that images of Starship’s heat shield from earlier flights showed concerning charring, which SpaceX must limit for Starship to survive plunging back into Earth’s atmosphere at orbital speeds more than once.

Figuring out how to land and refly both the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft is integral to SpaceX’s long-term vision for this vehicle.

SpaceX engineers refer to this capability as the “ holy grail ” of rocketry. Typically whole or large parts of rockets are discarded after each flight, but reusing them can drive down the cost per mission. Never has an entire launch vehicle been reused, from top to bottom — and SpaceX imagines doing so will lower the price of getting cargo to orbit by orders of magnitude.

Only such a rocket can pave the way for the future that Musk — and other space visionaries — hope for, with colonies of people living and working in space.

Musk first began mapping out the idea for Starship in the mid-2010s. He cycled through names that included the “ Interplanetary Transport System ” and BFR, for “ Big F—ing Rocket ,” while occasionally acknowledging the concept “is so preposterously difficult that there are times where I wonder whether we can actually do this,” as he admitted at a Wall Street Journal CEO Council summit in 2021.

And the idea has evolved through the years, only solidifying into a towering, steel form when SpaceX began full-scale test flights in 2023. But even since then, the company has churned through various versions of the vehicles.

Only now, with Starship Version 3, or V3, does Musk believe SpaceX has landed on the correct iteration.

“The design is capable of full reusability,” he said this month — marking one of the first times he’s expressed such full-throated confidence. “Of that I am certain.”

Still, daunting engineering hurdles lie ahead.

While Musk has indicated that he’s pleased with the performance of the latest version of Starship’s heat shield, SpaceX is still collecting data. A few of the Starlink satellites on board Monday’s flight will be equipped with cameras, enabling them to peer back at Starship’s exterior as they’re deployed and analyze the heat-resistant tiles.

Apart from the reusability question, SpaceX is staring down a few other unprecedented engineering problems as it looks to prepare Starship for deep-space exploration.

For example, to achieve a lunar landing for NASA, Starship must be refueled while it sits in near-Earth orbit before it heads to the moon. Doing so requires transferring super-chilled propellants, which must be kept at temperatures colder than minus 260 F (minus 162 C), between multiple Starship spacecraft in space.

Such a feat has never been attempted in the history of spaceflight. SpaceX would have to accomplish this propellant transfer perhaps a dozen or more times for a single moon mission.

As Starship begins to enter operations, if Musk’s vision holds true, it could mean drastic changes for some communities here on Earth.

Already, residents near SpaceX’s South Texas company town, called Starbase, are grappling with the impact of watching the largest rocket ever built take off from their backyards a few times per year. Sonic booms can be as loud as gunshots and vibrations can register as small earthquakes.

While some locals embrace SpaceX’s presence, a group of residents filed a lawsuit in April alleging that Starship flights cause property damage. (The company has argued that even if the residents can prove damages were related to Starship, the impact was unintentional.)

“I have family that live in Brownsville, Texas, and they’re like, ‘Our walls are shaking every time this launch happens,’” Gonzalez said, referring to the South Texas city that lies west of SpaceX’s Starbase.

“I love it,” Gonzalez said of the launches, “but they’re not as big of fans.”

And Musk envisions dramatically ramping up Starship’s launch cadence. He aims for the vehicle to soon begin launching once or twice per month — and eventually, as often as once an hour .

To reach that frequency, SpaceX is expanding its operations to two additional locations: first to Florida’s Space Coast, which is already home to the busiest spaceports in the world across NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX then is aiming to build a $100 billion launch complex in southern Louisiana — a state that has never hosted an orbital rocket launch.

“Starbase Louisiana will ultimately have over a dozen launch towers, enabling more than 30 Starship flights per day and making it the biggest launch site on Earth!” Musk said on his social media platform, X, shortly after the August announcement.

While the goals may seem outlandish — and Musk frequently underestimates how long it will take SpaceX to achieve certain milestones — engineering experts frequently point to the company’s deep well of talent and proven track record of solving daunting technical challenges as evidence the company will one day realize its bold ambitions.

Doubt expressed by SpaceX critics often has not aged well. A decade ago, industry experts were skeptical that the company could figure out how to reuse parts of its Falcon 9 rocket. Now it’s the most frequently launched rocket in the world, by far, and has transformed how other rocket makers approach design and development.

However, SpaceX has made it clear that as Starship ramps up, flights of its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets will wind down.

The result is expected to have sweeping implications for the broader space industry — and not all the effects are well understood.

This transition period is already spurring a “panic,” as one analyst called it, as the loss of the Falcon 9 could create a bottleneck for commercial space companies looking to get payloads to orbit.

And there’s no guarantee Starship will fill that void, as SpaceX has not publicly spoken about selling space aboard the rocket to commercial customers.

Robert Sproles, CEO of Germany-based launch broker and integration services companies Exolaunch, told CNN that he believes some reactions to Falcon 9’s retirement may be alarmist — but there is little doubt that demand for launches is outpacing supply.

This demand is bound to drive prices up, Sproles said, “and I don’t see that changing in the foreseeable future.”

史蒂夫·内修斯/路透社

德克萨斯州最南端海岸线附近的沙质海岸边的人们早已习惯了有史以来最强大的火箭发出的震耳欲聋的轰鸣声：自 2023 年以来，SpaceX 的星舰的各种原型机已从该地区发射了 13 次——其中近一半以某种形式的意外爆炸告终。

但接下来，风险将变得更加高。

周一，SpaceX公司将首次尝试将星舰送入轨道，从而部署新一代星链互联网卫星的首批卫星。预计发射窗口将于美国东部时间上午8:15开启，持续75分钟。

如果成功，周一的试飞可能标志着向前迈出了重要一步——这意味着星舰可能很快就会结束试飞阶段并投入全面运营。

随着星舰跨越这一门槛，预计它将对更广泛的航天工业产生巨大的连锁反应。

星舰将部署一系列新的太空技术，包括升级后的星链卫星，旨在提升 SpaceX 全球互联网业务的容量，以及首席执行官埃隆·马斯克希望能够为耗能巨大的 AI 模型提供动力的轨道数据中心。

此后，马斯克的承诺愈发大胆：在与中国的新一轮太空竞赛中，星舰已获得一份价值数十亿美元的合同，将NASA宇航员送上月球表面——这或许是自阿波罗计划以来的首次。此外，马斯克还继续强调他那看似遥不可及的愿景：利用这枚巨型运载火箭在火星上建造一座自给自足的城市。

自星舰试飞开始以来，从2019年短暂的“跳跃”测试开始，这些目标似乎一直遥不可及。但如果周一的飞行成功，将标志着该飞行器研发进入一个新阶段——同时也带来了一系列新的风险。

SpaceX在一篇博客文章中承认，在过去的13次试飞中，该公司有意将星舰置于“被动安全的亚轨道轨迹”上。这意味着“即使完全失去对飞船的控制，它也已经走上了重返大气层并在预定地点溅落的轨道”。

当星舰首次尝试进入轨道时，它将失去这层安全保障。它将以极高的速度和精确的轨道飞行，从而进入绕地球的自由落体状态，这意味着，一旦失去控制，它很难被拉回地球。

进入轨道将为星舰带来一系列令人眼花缭乱的新可能性，或许能使其首次部署功能性卫星，并为未来更深入的太空探索铺平道路。

但失误也会带来新的威胁。SpaceX公司表示，星舰的飞行高度将远低于载人空间站，其飞行高度约为275公里（171英里），而国际空间站的轨道高度约为400公里（200英里），中国的天宫空间站的运行高度则在340公里（210英里）以上。然而，如果星舰在轨道上失去控制，火箭可能会与在轨运行的卫星或其他重要设备相撞。

因此，该公司表示，如果在周一飞行开始的最初几分钟内出现任何故障迹象，可能会中止计划中的发动机点火——使星舰保持在亚轨道飞行路径上。

“太多环节都可能出错，”伊利诺伊大学航空航天工程系副教授约瑟夫·冈萨雷斯说，“比如推进剂系统——可能出现泄漏，或者某个部件的顶部结冰，导致发动机无法点火。这样一来，轨道上就只剩下一个无法启动的物体，而且还可能构成威胁。”

与此同时，SpaceX 正在应对一系列工程挑战，尽管它正在为这款前所未有的飞行器重塑发射行业，并有可能重塑人类在宇宙中的未来奠定基础。

周一的任务虽然预计将首次部署运行卫星，但仍被视为一次测试飞行。SpaceX公司也将积极评估其近期对飞行器所做的改进。

在 7 月份的最后一次测试任务中，超重型火箭助推器（为星舰提供从发射台上起飞的第一次动力）在练习垂直降落到海湾之前的瞬间，仅能重新点燃其 13 台发动机中的 8 台。

这个问题并没有影响任务的整体成功，但实现可控、安全的着陆对于星舰的长期能力至关重要，因为该公司希望在发射塔回收火箭，以便反复发射火箭。

SpaceX表示，为了解决超重型运载火箭长期存在的发动机问题，他们进行了多项调整，包括“硬件改造以改善发动机的过滤效果，以及软件改进以提高重新点火的可靠性”。尽管如此，超重型运载火箭仍不会返回陆地着陆，而是会再次尝试在海洋上空进行着陆演练。

与此同时，星舰上层飞船（也称“飞船”）将启动自身引擎，继续沿亚轨道飞行。作为安全预防措施，SpaceX表示，随后将对飞船进行约20分钟的检查，确保引导飞船安全返回地球的系统及其备用系统均运行正常，之后才会再次启动飞船引擎进入地球轨道。

迄今为止，星舰的大部分测试飞行时间都略超过一小时，而且全部都是亚轨道飞行。但周一，这艘飞船可能会在空中停留近10个小时，部署其搭载的26颗星链卫星，并绕地球飞行六圈。

随后，飞船将尝试安全地自行返回大气层，并在智利海岸附近的太平洋上完成一次垂直、可控的着陆。

与超重型助推器一样，飞船的受控下降至关重要——旨在为将来尝试将飞行器降落回其发射塔的怀抱铺平道路，以便它以后可以再次飞行。

SpaceX此前从未尝试过这种操作。马斯克此前曾暗示SpaceX可能会在周一的试飞中尝试这种操作，但该公司最终决定不这样做。

“我们最担心的是，如果飞船在陆地上解体，碎片散落一地，伤及民众，”马斯克本月在全英峰会（All-In Summit，一个科技大会）上发表讲话时说。“那样的话，我们的知名度会迅速下降。”

（2025年，在两次连续的试飞中，星舰飞船突然爆炸，碎片分别散落在特克斯和凯科斯群岛以及巴哈马群岛的人口稠密地区及其附近。一些居民对此感到愤怒。）

两级轨道火箭的上半部分以前从未被回收并再次飞行过，还有很多事情有待观察。

飞船在重返地球大气层时，必须承受极高的温度——可能超过华氏2500度（摄氏1370度）。SpaceX仍在不断改进飞船外部的特殊涂层，即隔热罩，其作用是在重返大气层过程中保护飞船的完整性。

“进入轨道时，隔热罩承受的温度会比亚轨道试飞时略高，”冈萨雷斯说。“所以下一次飞行将告诉我们很多信息。重返大气层将比我们之前发射时经历的更加严酷。”

冈萨雷斯指出，星舰早期飞行中拍摄的隔热罩图像显示出令人担忧的烧焦现象，SpaceX 必须限制这种现象，才能使星舰在多次以轨道速度坠入地球大气层后仍能幸存下来。

弄清楚如何让超重型运载火箭和星舰飞船着陆并重新飞行，是 SpaceX 对该飞行器长期愿景的关键所在。

SpaceX的工程师将这项能力称为火箭技术的“圣杯”。通常情况下，火箭的全部或大部分部件在每次飞行后都会被丢弃，但重复使用可以大幅降低每次任务的成本。此前从未有过从头到尾完全重复使用运载火箭的先例——SpaceX认为，这样做可以将货物送入轨道的成本降低几个数量级。

只有这样的火箭才能为马斯克和其他太空梦想家所期盼的未来铺平道路，实现人类在太空生活和工作的梦想。

马斯克在 2010 年代中期开始构思星舰。他曾考虑过“星际运输系统”和 BFR（“巨型火箭”）等名称，同时也偶尔承认这个概念“极其困难，以至于有时我会怀疑我们是否真的能做到”，正如他在 2021 年《华尔街日报》CEO 理事会峰会上所承认的那样。

多年来，这一理念不断发展演变，直到 2023 年 SpaceX 开始全面试飞时，才最终凝固成高耸的钢铁形态。但即便从那时起，该公司也一直在不断改进各种版本的飞行器。

只有到了现在，随着星舰第三版（V3）的问世，马斯克才相信SpaceX已经找到了正确的迭代方向。

“该设计完全可以重复使用，”他本月表示——这是他首次如此自信地表达这种态度。“对此我确信无疑。”

然而，前方仍有艰巨的工程难题等待克服。

尽管马斯克表示他对星舰最新版隔热罩的性能感到满意，但SpaceX仍在收集数据。周一发射的几颗星链卫星将配备摄像头，以便在星舰展开隔热瓦时观察其外部情况并分析隔热瓦的性能。

除了可重复使用性问题之外，SpaceX 在为星舰进行深空探索做准备时，还面临着一些前所未有的工程难题。

例如，为了实现美国宇航局的登月任务，星舰必须在前往月球之前，在近地轨道上进行燃料补给。这需要将超低温推进剂（必须保持在零下260华氏度（零下162摄氏度）以下的温度）在多艘星舰飞船之间进行转移。

在航天史上，这样的壮举从未有人尝试过。SpaceX 可能需要在一次登月任务中完成十几次甚至更多的推进剂转移。

如果马斯克的设想成真，随着星舰开始投入运营，地球上的一些社区可能会发生翻天覆地的变化。

位于德克萨斯州南部SpaceX公司园区“星际基地”（Starbase）附近的居民已经开始感受到每年几次在家门口观看有史以来最大火箭发射升空带来的影响。音爆的音量堪比枪声，震动甚至能被感知为小型地震。

虽然一些当地居民欢迎SpaceX的到来，但一群居民在4月份提起诉讼，声称星舰飞行造成了财产损失。（该公司辩称，即使居民能够证明损失与星舰有关，但这种影响并非有意为之。）

“我的家人住在德克萨斯州布朗斯维尔，他们说，‘每次发射的时候，我们的墙都会震动，’”冈萨雷斯说道，他指的是位于SpaceX星际基地以西的德克萨斯州南部城市布朗斯维尔。

“我很喜欢，”冈萨雷斯谈到这些发布会时说，“但他们却不是那么热衷。”

马斯克设想大幅提高星舰的发射频率。他的目标是让星舰很快达到每月发射一到两次，最终达到每小时一次。

为了达到这一发射频率，SpaceX正在将其运营扩展到另外两个地点：首先是佛罗里达州的太空海岸，那里已经拥有世界上最繁忙的航天发射场，包括NASA的肯尼迪航天中心和卡纳维拉尔角太空部队基地。SpaceX随后计划在路易斯安那州南部建造一座耗资1000亿美元的发射场——该州此前从未进行过轨道火箭发射。

“路易斯安那星际基地最终将拥有十几座发射塔，每天可进行 30 多次星舰飞行，使其成为地球上最大的发射场！”马斯克在 8 月份宣布该计划后不久，在他的社交媒体平台 X 上说道。

虽然这些目标看起来可能有些异想天开——而且马斯克经常低估SpaceX实现某些里程碑所需的时间——但工程专家经常指出，该公司拥有深厚的人才储备和解决艰巨技术挑战的可靠记录，这证明该公司终有一天会实现其宏伟目标。

SpaceX批评者曾经表达的质疑如今看来往往站不住脚。十年前，业内专家还怀疑该公司能否找到猎鹰9号火箭部件的重复利用方法。而现在，它已成为世界上发射次数最多的火箭，遥遥领先于其他火箭制造商，并彻底改变了其他火箭制造商的设计和研发方式。

然而，SpaceX 已明确表示，随着星舰的发射量增加，其主力火箭猎鹰 9 号的飞行量将会减少。

预计这一结果将对更广泛的航天工业产生深远影响——但并非所有影响都已被充分理解。

正如一位分析师所说，这一过渡时期已经引发了“恐慌”，因为猎鹰 9 号的失事可能会给希望将有效载荷送入轨道的商业航天公司造成瓶颈。

而且也不能保证星舰能够填补这一空白，因为 SpaceX 尚未公开谈论向商业客户出售火箭上的太空空间。

德国发射经纪和集成服务公司 Exolaunch 的首席执行官 Robert Sproles 告诉 CNN，他认为一些人对猎鹰 9 号退役的反应可能是危言耸听——但毫无疑问，发射需求正在超过供应。

斯普罗尔斯表示，这种需求势必会推高价格，“而且我认为在可预见的未来，这种情况不会改变。”