SpaceX Fires Up Starship V3 Ahead of Next Orbital Flight

BOCA CHICA, Texas — SpaceX has test-fired the upgraded upper stage of its next Starship, lighting all of the vehicle's Raptor engines in a full-duration static fire at Starbase that clears one of the last big hurdles before the rocket's next orbital flight.

The ground test, held on the orbital launch mount, saw the Starship V3 ship held down while its engines ran for the duration of a typical ascent burn. Teams are now reviewing the data, and SpaceX has signaled the flight could follow within weeks if the hardware checks out.

A Bigger, Stronger Starship

Starship V3 is the most substantial revision of the vehicle yet. It is taller than the ships that flew earlier this year, carries more propellant, and uses an upgraded Raptor engine that SpaceX says is simpler to build and more powerful. The company has also reworked the heat shield — historically the toughest problem in bringing the ship back intact — with more durable tiles and a redesigned attachment scheme meant to survive reentry without the tile losses that marred some earlier descents.

The payload target is the headline number: SpaceX is designing V3 to carry well over 100 metric tons to orbit in its reusable configuration, the threshold the company says it needs to make its most ambitious plans economic. That capacity underpins everything from rapid Starlink deployment to the orbital infrastructure behind SpaceX's plan for a million-satellite orbital AI network.

Launch Cadence Keeps Climbing

The static fire comes during one of the busiest stretches in SpaceX history on the Falcon side of the business, where the company has been flying missions at a record pace — including its first Falcon Heavy national-security launch on a record-setting day. Starship is the vehicle meant to eventually inherit that cadence, and each test brings the full-reuse architecture closer to operational service.

SpaceX has framed V3 as the version that moves Starship from experimental test campaign to working launch system. Catching the booster with the launch tower's mechanical arms is now routine; the next goal is to make catching and reflying the ship routine too.

The Road to the Moon and Mars

Beyond Starlink, Starship is the vehicle NASA is counting on to land astronauts near the lunar south pole under Artemis, and the one Musk insists will eventually carry crews to Mars. A clean orbital flight, a controlled reentry and a soft return of both stages would move those timelines from aspiration toward schedule. SpaceX details the vehicle's design and goals on its official Starship page.

For now, attention stays on Starbase, where a tested ship sits waiting for a launch license and a weather window. If the next flight goes to plan, SpaceX will have shown that the biggest rocket ever built can do the one thing that matters most — fly again.