Starship is a two-stage, methalox powered, super heavy-lift launch vehicle currently under development by SpaceX. It is the heaviest, tallest and most powerful space launch vehicle to have flown into space. Starship is intended to be fully reusable, which means both stages will be recovered after a mission and reused.
Starship has broken the world record for the tallest launch vehicle three times on its first, second and seventh flight and it will do it again many more times as the launch system is perpetually iterated and upgraded.
Both first and second stage are able to return and land at the launch site: The Booster (Stage 1) does a boostback burn and is caught by the arms on the launch tower, and the Ship (Stage 2) re-enters from an orbit, slows down and is also caught by the tower. Both booster and ship are designed to be "rapidly reusable, like an airplane".
The vehicle will likely become taller as a way to increase propellant capacity and delta-V, especially the ship. As of January 2025, a Block 3 version is planned, which at 150m total height would be 25% taller than the first Starships (121.3m).
General Overview[]
The Starship launch vehicle is designed to ultimately replace SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles, expand SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation, and launch crews to both low Earth orbit, the moon and Mars. SpaceX plans to use a variation of the Starship vehicle as tankers, refueling other Starships to allow missions to geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars. A Human Landing System (HLS) variant of Starship is to land astronauts on the Moon as part of NASA's Artemis program. Starship is primarily meant to enable SpaceX's ambition of colonizing Mars but will most likely be prodimentally used for launching Starlink satellites.
Starship consists of a Ship stacked on top of a Super Heavy Booster. The booster and ship are both powered by Raptor engines, which burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen. The Super Heavy Booster has a total of 33 Raptor 2 engines. 13 of the inner engines can gimbal via eTVC (Electric Thrust Vector Control). The outer 20 cannot gimbal. The ship has a total of 6 engines, with 3 designed for sea level and the outer 3 optimized for space. In the future, Starship will have 6 Raptor vacuum engines, and 3 sea-level Raptors. Both stages are constructed primarily of stainless steel, a material chosen as an alternative to a series of prior designs.
The booster is designed to use its engines to slow itself down before it is caught by a pair of mechanical arms attached to the Orbital Launch Integration Tower (IT). The ship is protected during atmospheric reentry by its thermal protection system, consisting of hexagonal tiles, and an ablative layer in its weak spots under it just in case. The ship will use a 'belly flop' maneuver where the spacecraft turns from a horizontal into a vertical position, then lands using its engines. This maneuver was tested with SN8, SN9, SN10, SN11 and SN15. SN15 was the first to land and survive the landing, however SN10 also landed, but did it too hard, exploding 8 minutes after landing.
Development Overview[]
The Starship system aims to achieve frequent space launches at low cost. Development follows an iterative and incremental approach involving frequent, and often destructive, test flights of prototype vehicles. The first flight test of the full Starship system took place on 20 April 2023, successfully lifting-off with several engines out, but ended four minutes after launch with a loss of control and destruction of the launch vehicle. The second flight test of the vehicle took place on 18 November 2023, successfully achieving stage separation, but the Super Heavy Booster exploded around 20 seconds after stage separation to initiate its boostback burn. while the upper stage was lost around 8 minutes into the flight.
The third flight test of Starship took place on 14 March 2024, successfully achieving full duration ascent burn of the Booster and Ship, and achieved second stage engine shutdown. Booster was lost during water landing just shy of seconds before 7 minutes into the flight after only 3 out of 13 engines ignited. Ship successfully reached its planned trajectory, tested its payload door by opening and closing it while at space, and conducted a propellant transfer demo but failed to relight one Raptor needed for in-space deorbit burn. Ship was lost during re-entry on its way to Indian Ocean around 49 minutes into the flight. The fourth flight test of Starship took place on 6 June 2024, both Booster and Ship successfully completed their full duration ascent burn for the second time, Booster reignited its 12 out of 13 engines and successfully landed in the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, Ship successfully opened its payload door and completed its propellant transfer demo, Ship also reentered Earth's atmosphere, however, its flaps got damaged due to its ablative material, but yet, Ship succesfully survived reentry for the first time and landed in the Indian Ocean, marking Starship's first full successful flight, the fifth flight test of Starship was launched on 13 October 2024, with a similar flight profile to flight 4, with the only difference that it featured a successful booster catch, and a less destructive reentry that ended in a splashdown in the target. Then the flight 6 did the same, but shortly after the go for catch was ordered, it was aborted due to communications issues, and ended up being another splashdown. And then the ship did coasted and did an in space relit demo, and then splashed down during day.
Versions[]
See also: Ship/Versions
There are three (planned) versions of Starship: Block 1, Block 2 and Block 3. As of the beginning of 2025, Boosters used are Block 1, and the Ships are already Block 2. The planned specs of the versions are, as of April 2024:[1]
Specifications of future Starship versions (as of April 2024) (do NOT delete this image).
Gallery[]
