Elon Musk’s SpaceX postponed the 10th launch of its Starship rocket due to cloudy weather in Texas on Monday (August 25, 2025), another slight delay in its efforts to overcome development setbacks and achieve several long-sought milestones essential to the Mars rocket system’s reusable design.

The 71-metres tall Super Heavy booster and its 52-metres tall Starship upper half, which together make it taller than New York’s Statue of Liberty, sat on a launch mount at SpaceX’s Starbase rocket facilities ahead of liftoff time that had been moved back a few times because of gloomy weather.

The rocket was filled with millions of pounds of propellant and set to launch when SpaceX around 8:00 p.m. EST (0000 GMT) opted to call off the day’s launch and turn the operation into a launch rehearsal, considering the weather forecast would remain unfavourable throughout the launch window.

SpaceX will try to launch Starship on Tuesday (August 26, 2025) at 7:30 p.m. EST (2130 GMT).

A liquid oxygen leak at the Starship launchpad had nixed a Sunday (August 24, 2025) launch attempt, billionaire Musk wrote on X overnight, adding SpaceX would try again on Monday (August 25, 2025). Mr. Musk on Monday (August 25, 2025) appeared on SpaceX’s live stream for a brief chat about Starship’s design and its role in ferrying humans to Mars.

Development of SpaceX’s next-generation rocket, key to the company’s powerful launch business and Mr. Musk’s goal to send humans to Mars, has faced repeated hiccups this year.

NASA hopes to use the rocket as soon as 2027 for its first crewed moon landing since the Apollo program.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet business, a major source of company revenue, is also tied to Starship’s success. Mr. Musk aims to use Starship to launch larger batches of Starlink satellites, which have so far been deployed by SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, into space.

“In about 6 or 7 years, there will be days where Starship launches more than 24 times in 24 hours,” Mr. Musk said on Sunday (August 24, 2025), replying to a user on X.

This year, two Starship testing failures early in flight, another failure in space on its ninth flight, and a massive test stand explosion in June that sent debris flying into nearby Mexican territory have tested SpaceX’s capital-intensive test-to-failure development approach, in which new iterations of rocket prototypes are flown to their technical limits.

That ethos is markedly different from SpaceX’s rivals such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, whose New Glenn rocket made an operational debut in January following years of on-the-ground development and testing. The new Vulcan rocket from United Launch Alliance, co-owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin , had a similar upbringing before its 2024 debut.

With SpaceX’s approach, testing failures early in Starship’s flight prevent the company from gathering vital technical data needed to advance the rocket’s design.

Still, SpaceX, which Mr. Musk expects to record around $15.5 billion in revenue this year, has continued to swiftly produce new Starships for test flights at Starbase, a sprawling and rapidly growing rocket industrial complex. The area was made a municipality in May by local voters, many of them SpaceX workers.

Starship’s setbacks underscore the technical complexities of the latest iteration. The ship is packed with far more capabilities than predecessor models such as increased thrust, a potentially more resilient heat shield and stronger steering flaps crucial to nailing its atmospheric reentry — key traits of its rapidly reusable design that Musk has long pushed for.

SpaceX has a lengthy to-do list for Starship’s development before the rocket begins routine missions envisioned by Mr. Musk. That includes demonstrating safe returns from space, payload deployments in orbit and complex in-space propellant refuelling which is crucial to its moon mission assignments for NASA.

Whenever Starship can launch, the rocket system will liftoff from Texas and separate in half dozens of miles in altitude, with its Super Heavy booster returning for a water landing off the Texas coast, while Starship ignites its own engines to blast further into space.

In space, Starship will attempt to deploy mock Starlink satellites and reignite an engine along its suborbital path around the globe. Atmospheric reentry over the Indian Ocean will test its exterior steering flaps and an array of experimental heat shield tiles as the ship blazes through intense friction and heat.

Published – August 26, 2025 06:51 am IST

SpaceX’s Starship rocket is pictured after launching as seen from South Padre Island near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. on January 16, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

SpaceX launched its Starship rocket on its latest test flight Thursday (January 16, 2025), but the spacecraft was destroyed following a thrilling booster catch back at the pad.

Elon Musk’s company said Starship broke apart — what it called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” The spacecraft’s six engines appeared to shut down one by one during ascent, with contact lost just 8 1/2 minutes into the flight.

The spacecraft — a new and upgraded model making its debut — was supposed to soar across the Gulf of Mexico from Texas on a near loop around the world similar to previous test flights. SpaceX had packed it with 10 dummy satellites for practice at releasing them.

A minute before the loss, SpaceX used the launch tower’s giant mechanical arms to catch the returning booster, a feat achieved only once before. The descending booster hovered over the launch pad before being gripped by the pair of arms dubbed chopsticks.

The thrill of the catch quickly turned into disappointment for not only the company, but the crowds gathered along the southern tip of Texas.

“It was great to see a booster come down, but we are obviously bummed out about ship,” said SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot, adding it would take time to analyze the data and figure out what happened. “It’s a flight test. It’s an experimental vehicle.”

The last data received from the spacecraft indicated an altitude of 90 miles (146 kilometers) and a velocity of 13,245 mph (21,317 kph).

The 400-foot (123-meter) rocket had thundered away in late afternoon from Boca Chica Beach near the Mexican border. The late hour ensured a daylight entry halfway around the world in the Indian Ocean. But the shiny retro-looking spacecraft never got nearly that far.

SpaceX had made improvements to the spacecraft for the latest demo and added a fleet of satellite mockups. The test satellites were the same size as SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites and, like the spacecraft, were meant to be destroyed upon entry.

Musk plans to launch actual Starlinks on Starships before moving on to other satellites and, eventually, crews.

It was the seventh test flight for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket. NASA has reserved a pair of Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. Musk’s goal is Mars.

Hours earlier in Florida, another billionaire’s rocket company — Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin — launched the newest supersized rocket, New Glenn. The rocket reached orbit on its first flight, successfully placing an experimental satellite thousands of miles above Earth. But the first-stage booster was destroyed, missing its targeted landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic.