SpaceX prepares – SpaceX is preparing for a May 19 debut of its third-generation Starship and its 12th overall test launch. The flight comes after a long trail of mishaps—premature explosions on the pad and mid-flight, plus failures that cut missions short—alongside repeated pr
When SpaceX is ready to light the engines again in South Texas, it won’t just be another countdown. It will be the 12th time it has tried to launch Starship—the world’s largest rocket system—and the next step toward billionaire Elon Musk’s long-term goal of landing humans on the moon and Mars.
This time, SpaceX is aiming for a May 19 debut of its third-generation Starship. The company’s road to that moment has been loud. costly. and relentlessly public: since the rocket’s April 2023 debut ended in a premature explosion. the Starship program has repeatedly run into anomalies and failures—on the test stand and mid-flight—drawing headlines with every new fireball. Yet the same test flights have also produced clear engineering wins. including booster re-use. mock Starlink deployments. and multiple attempts to recover spacecraft hardware with towering mechanical arms known as “chopsticks.”.
So as the next launch approaches, the record of what has worked—and what has not—spells out the stakes behind every launch pad delay and every hard landing.
SpaceX’s most recent test came on Oct. 13. 2025. when the company ended the year on a high note after launching from its Starbase headquarters in South Texas. about 23 miles from Brownsville near the U.S.-Mexico border. Super Heavy. the lower stage. ignited all 33 Raptor-class engines as it pushed Starship’s upper stage high above the Texas coast. A few minutes after liftoff, Starship separated and fired its six Raptor engines to continue on a lower suborbital trajectory.
As the vehicle traveled halfway around the world. it deployed mock Starlink internet satellites for the second time in a row. It also relighted a Raptor engine in space for the third time ever in a maneuver intended to enable a future return to the ground. The mission ended with a planned splashdown about an hour after liftoff in the Indian Ocean west of Australia.
The Super Heavy booster, meanwhile, returned for a water landing about seven minutes after launch in the Gulf of Mexico, renamed by the U.S. government as the Gulf of America.
Less than a month earlier, on Aug. 26. 2025. SpaceX carried out what it called its most successful test of the year—though only after three consecutive flights in which Starship exploded prematurely. In that launch. Starship separated from the rocket booster about three minutes into flight to continue on its own on a suborbital trajectory.
That mission hit major milestones as it went. Starship deployed eight mock Starlink satellites and reignited one of its Raptor engines in space for the second time ever. a necessary maneuver intended to bring the vehicle back to the ground. After about an hour over the Indian Ocean. Starship re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. fired its engines for a controlled vertical landing on the ocean’s surface west of Australia—and then exploded in a fireball.
Super Heavy still managed to make a planned water landing off the Texas coast after completing several in-flight experiments.
On May 27, 2025, Starship traveled the furthest distance of the year before exploding. After lifting off, the upper stage streaked through suborbital space well beyond previous 2025 flights in January and March. But the mission ended when Starship spun out of control about halfway through its flight without completing some of its most important objectives.
The launch still began with a key success: it marked the first-ever launch of a Super Heavy booster that had flown during a previous flight in January. Reusing a booster was described as an important milestone for SpaceX’s goal of proving the rocket can fly multiple times.
Starship separated from the booster and fired its six Raptor engines. setting it on a trajectory that would carry it around the world. But contact was lost about 46 minutes into the flight as it spun out of control and once again came apart. Debris fell into the Indian Ocean, far from inhabited areas, SpaceX said. The company was also unable to deploy test Starlink satellites.
For the booster, SpaceX lost contact during descent about six minutes after launch. In earlier test missions since October 2024. SpaceX had successfully flown and caught the booster back at the launch site using a pair of mechanical arms nicknamed “chopsticks.” In this case. SpaceX had no plans to recover the booster—yet instead of a controlled splashdown. the booster came apart in the air. which SpaceX described as “a rapid unscheduled disassembly. ” before plummeting into the Gulf of Mexico.
March 6, 2025 brought another abrupt turn. Flight operators lost contact with the 165-foot upper portion of Starship less than 10 minutes into the flight, after it exploded. The blast created debris visible from Florida to the Caribbean.
SpaceX said the explosion occurred despite mission teams making modifications after what they learned from the seventh flight. In a report released May 22 to the Federal Aviation Administration. SpaceX said operators noticed a “flash” close to the bottom section of Starship about five-and-a-half minutes into the vehicle’s ascent burn. followed by an “energetic event” that led to the loss of one of its Raptor engines. Within about two minutes. the remaining five of the vehicle’s six Raptor engines shut down. the vehicle veered out of control. and a communication breakdown followed. SpaceX said the vehicle then triggered its own self-destruction.
SpaceX identified what it called the “most probable root cause” as a hardware failure in one of the upper stage’s Raptor engines that resulted in inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition.
Even with Starship’s failure, the 232-foot Super Heavy booster returned to the launch pad for the third time ever, using the “chopsticks” system. SpaceX has emphasized that catching the Starship booster matters because it would enable a fully reusable booster designed to launch again.
The first Starship demonstration of 2025 also ended in a fiery end. On Jan. 16. 2025. mission controllers lost contact within 8 1/2 minutes of the flight and later determined the spacecraft was destroyed in what the company called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Video posted on social media showed the explosion and its aftermath as remains of the spacecraft broke up. appearing like a meteor shower.
After an investigation with the FAA. SpaceX said the mishap was caused by a series of propellant leaks and fires in the aft section of the vehicle. It said this led to “all but one of Starship’s engines” carrying out controlled shut down sequences. which then resulted in a communications breakdown and the vehicle triggering its own self-destruction.
Elon Musk posted about the event on his social media site X, saying, “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!” He shared a user video showing debris raining down near the Atlantic Ocean, and added that “improved versions” of the spaceship and booster were “already waiting for launch.”
Despite the failure, one major accomplishment did survive the wreckage: it included the second-ever successful return of the rocket booster to the launch pad.
On Nov. 19, 2024, the final Starship flight test of the year drew a high-profile audience, with President Donald Trump in attendance. The Starship launch began at 5 p.m. ET over the Gulf of Mexico, renamed by the U.S. government as the Gulf of America. The booster splashed down off the coast of Texas seven minutes after launch.
Starship itself flew for more than an hour and splashed down at 6:05 p.m. ET in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX officials had aimed to replicate a previous test by steering the booster back autonomously to the landing pad and catching it with two giant mechanical arms. But officials opted to skip the maneuver for safety reasons during the flight.
In an update on its website, SpaceX attributed the safety decision to data from “automated health checks” of hardware on both the launch and catch tower.
The company also reignited its Raptor engines in space to attempt an orbital burn, a crucial maneuver designed for a vehicle return to the ground. The launch plan included flying the ship at a higher angle of attack to test what it can handle on future landings.
The program’s momentum toward hardware recovery is visible in Oct. 13. 2024. when SpaceX caught a rocket booster in the mechanical arms nicknamed “chopsticks.” For that fifth test flight. empty Starship blasted off from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. flying on a trajectory over the Gulf. In a first, the Super Heavy booster flew back to the launch pad.
SpaceX built a launch tower with massive mechanized metal arms nicknamed “chopsticks. ” and they managed to catch the descending booster in a daring maneuver. Before the booster dropped and landed. it had pushed Starship upward into the atmosphere. sending it soaring more than 130 miles high. An hour after liftoff, Starship made a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean.
Ahead of the demo, SpaceX said engineers reworked the rocket’s heat shield, replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer tiles and a backup ablative layer.
On June 6, 2024, Starship completed what was described as the first-ever successful landing burn. The craft separated successfully from the booster, with 32 of 33 engines igniting properly during launch about seven minutes into the flight.
The booster returned to Earth and splashed down in the Gulf as planned. and all six of Starship’s engines powered it into successful orbital insertion. Heat shields took a beating. with at least one throwing debris into one of the live-streaming external cameras. but the vehicle still completed re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Roughly one hour and six minutes into the flight, Starship completed its first-ever landing burn and splashed down into the Indian Ocean to raucous applause.
Before that, on March 14, 2024, Starship reached space before being lost in the atmosphere. In the third test, Starship succeeded in separating from the booster and proceeding to orbit within minutes of launching, where it conducted in-flight tests while coasting through space.
Video of its flight beamed back to Earth using SpaceX’s Starlink Satellite network and captured the start of re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. But the signal was lost about an hour into the mission, and SpaceX later concluded the craft likely broke apart.
Even though Starship failed to make its planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX said the rocket still achieved several key milestones, including the successful firing of its 33 Raptor engines in the booster and the opening of a payload door.
The second test flight of Starship, on Nov. 18, 2023, lasted longer but still ended in an explosion. The booster separated successfully and reached space before the ground crew lost communication after nine minutes. Three minutes later, SpaceX lost both the booster and the spacecraft in two explosions.
SpaceX framed the episode as more than a setback, describing optimism about stage separation and saying the remaining outcome would still provide valuable data to remedy what went wrong.
Starship’s test story began with its own failure on April 20. 2023. when the rocket exploded just four minutes into its inaugural test flight. The craft launched from SpaceX’s private Starbase site in Texas. but telemetry data showed several of the spacecraft’s engines had failed. The explosion happened before the booster and spacecraft could even separate.
SpaceX later confirmed that the rocket’s flight termination system was activated to destroy the tumbling vehicle before the fiery end.
The program’s track record across these 11 flight tests so far from South Texas tells a complicated story—one of recurring breakdowns alongside steadily accumulating capabilities. Starship has deployed mock Starlink internet satellites twice, and Super Heavy has been reused twice. SpaceX has also caught a returning booster back at the launch site with “chopsticks” three times. The upper stage. meanwhile. has managed to consistently fly at a suborbital height in space. traveling halfway around the world while landing in the Indian Ocean.
That mix—of dramatic losses and hard-won repeatability—is now the backdrop as SpaceX moves toward May 19 and its third-generation Starship. Another launch means another attempt to turn engineering lessons into momentum. while reminding everyone watching that even the successes have often come with sharp edges still waiting in the next attempt.
SpaceX Starship Super Heavy chopsticks Starlink mock satellites FAA report Raptor engines Gulf of America South Texas Starbase launch tests