SpaceX Attempts Tenth Starship Flight After Sunday Scrub

Houston, August 25, 2025 - SpaceX made its long-anticipated second attempt to launch Starship’s tenth integrated flight test from its Starbase facility near Boca Chica, Texas, on Monday evening after a 24-hour delay caused by ground-systems issues.

At approximately 7:30 p.m. ET, teams at the South Texas launch site commenced liftoff operations for Super Heavy booster B16 and the Ship 37 upper stage, aiming to demonstrate the fully reusable rocket system that SpaceX has developed to carry crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The booster, standing 232 feet tall, and the upper stage, at 171 feet, together form the most powerful launch vehicle ever built.

The attempt followed Sunday’s scrub, which occurred roughly 15 minutes before the scheduled 6:30 p.m. CT launch window, when SpaceX reported “an issue with ground systems” during fueling operations. Engineers spent the past 24 hours troubleshooting the liquid-oxygen leak that prompted the initial cancellation.

Key objectives for flight 10 include:

  • Super Heavy’s nominal ascent and separation from the Starship upper stage.
  • In-orbit reignition of the Raptor engines to perform an orbital-insertion burn.
  • Deployment of eight test Starlink payloads, which are designed to burn up on re-entry.
  • A controlled splashdown of Super Heavy in the Gulf of Mexico and a suborbital re-entry test of Starship’s thermal-protection tiles and steering flap functionality.

SpaceX provided a live webcast of the proceedings beginning approximately 30 minutes before T-0, available via its official website and on the X TV app.

The tenth test flight comes amid a year marked by multiple early-flight anomalies, including two early stage failures and a June test-stand explosion in nearby Mexican territory. SpaceX continues to follow its “test-to-failure” development philosophy, rapidly iterating Starship prototypes despite setbacks-a strategy Elon Musk asserts is crucial to achieving fully reusable access to space.

NASA plans to use Starship for its Artemis lunar missions, and SpaceX anticipates deploying larger batches of Starlink satellites on the vehicle in the future. Successful completion of flight 10 would be a significant milestone toward certifying the system for crewed missions.