SpaceX Advances Two Key Missions on August 26, 2025

VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif., & BOCA CHICA, Texas - SpaceX achieved a major milestone this afternoon and is gearing up for a pivotal Starship test tonight.

Falcon 9 Delivers Luxembourg’s NAOS Satellite At 2:53 p.m. Eastern Time, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base’s SLC-4E, carrying Luxembourg’s National Advanced Optical System (NAOS) spacecraft along with seven secondary payloads. NAOS separated successfully about 12 minutes into flight, marking SpaceX’s 104th Falcon 9 mission of 2025 and the booster’s 27th recovery landing at LZ-4. Secondary payloads included hyperspectral and synthetic-aperture radar demonstration satellites from Planet, Dhruva Space, Capella Space, Pixxel, and others.

Starship Flight 10 Set for Third Attempt Tonight Following two consecutive scrubs caused first by a ground-system oxygen leak and then by anvil-cloud weather constraints, SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10 is scheduled to launch tonight at 6:30 p.m. CDT from the Starbase facility in South Texas. Booster 16 will aim for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, while Ship 37’s upper stage seeks to complete a suborbital arc and splashdown in the Indian Ocean after deploying eight Starlink mass simulators and performing an in-space relight of a Raptor engine. SpaceX emphasizes a “fail fast, learn fast” approach, treating this integrated test as an opportunity to push the world’s largest rocket to its limits. Success tonight would clear the way for more frequent Starship flights and pave the path toward lunar and Mars missions.

SpaceX will provide live coverage beginning two hours before liftoff via its online webcast.