A SpaceX Super Heavy booster carrying the Starship spacecraft lifts off on its 12th test flight at Starbase, Texas, U.S. on May 22, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Starship megarocket lifts off on its 10th test flight from the SpaceX Starbase in Texas, August 26, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

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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

United States:

SpaceX successfully “caught” the first-stage booster of its Starship megarocket Sunday as it returned to the launch pad after a test flight, a world first in the company’s quest for rapid reusability.

The “super heavy booster” had blasted off attached to the Starship rocket minutes earlier, then made a picture-perfect controlled return to the same pad in Texas, where a pair of huge mechanical “chopsticks” reached out from the launch tower to bring the slowly descending booster to a halt, according to a livestream from Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.

“Folks, this is a day for the engineering history books,” a SpaceX spokesperson said in a voiceover on the company’s livestream, after the booster was safely in the tower’s grasp and company staffers had erupted in cheers.

“The tower has caught the rocket!!” SpaceX founder Musk posted on X.

Booster starts in top right corner. Watch to the end. Sound on pic.twitter.com/jS70tHLNcr

— (@kimbal) October 13, 2024

Liftoff occurred at 7:25 am (1225 GMT) in clear weather. While the booster returned to the launchpad, the upper stage of Starship was due to splash down in the Indian Ocean within the hour.

During its last flight in June, SpaceX achieved its first successful splashdown with Starship, a prototype spaceship that Musk hopes will one day carry humans to Mars.

NASA is also keenly awaiting a modified version of Starship to act as a lander vehicle for crewed flights to the Moon under the Artemis program later this decade.

SpaceX said its engineers have “spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success.”

Teams were monitoring to ensure “thousands” of criteria were met both on the vehicle and at the tower before any attempt to return the Super Heavy booster.

Had the conditions not been satisfied, the booster would have been redirected for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, as in previous tests.

Instead, having been given the green light, the returning booster decelerated from supersonic speeds and the powerful “chopstick arms” embraced it.

‘Fail fast, learn fast’

The large mechanical arms, called “Mechazilla” by Musk, have generated considerable excitement among space enthusiasts.

Starship stands 397 feet (121 meters) tall with both stages combined — about 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Its Super Heavy booster, which is 233 feet tall, produces 16.7 million pounds (74.3 Meganewtons) of thrust, about twice as powerful as the Saturn V rockets used during the Apollo missions.

SpaceX’s “fail fast, learn fast” strategy of rapid iterative testing, even when its rockets blow up spectacularly, has ultimately accelerated development and contributed to the company’s success.

Founded only in 2002, it quickly leapfrogged aerospace industry giants and is now the world leader in orbital launches, besides providing the only US spaceship currently certified to carry astronauts.

It has also created the world’s biggest internet satellite constellation — invaluable in disaster and war zones.

But its founding vision of making humanity a multiplanetary species is increasingly at risk of being overshadowed by Musk’s embrace of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his alignment with right-wing politics.

In recent weeks, the company has openly sparred with the Federal Aviation Administration over launch licensing and alleged violations, with Musk accusing the agency of overreach and calling for its chief, Michael Whitaker, to resign.

“He’s trying to position himself for minimal regulatory interference with SpaceX once Donald Trump becomes president,” said Mark Hass, a marketing expert and professor at Arizona State University. “But it’s a calculated gamble if things go the other way.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A view of Mars on August 26, 2003.
| Photo Credit: NASA/AP

The idea of transforming Mars into a world more hospitable to human habitation is a regular feature of science fiction. But could this be done in real life?

Scientists are now proposing a new approach to warm up the earth’s planetary neighbour by pumping engineered particles —similar in size to commercially available glitter and made of iron or aluminium — into the atmosphere as aerosols to trap escaping heat and scatter sunlight toward the Martian surface. The idea would be to augment the natural greenhouse effect on Mars to raise its surface temperature by roughly 28º C over a span of a decade.

This alone would not make Mars habitable for people, but the scientists who developed the proposal see it as a potentially doable initial step.

“Terraforming refers to modifying a planet’s environment to make it more earth-like. For Mars, warming the planet is a necessary, but insufficient, first step. Previous concepts have focused on releasing greenhouse gases, but these require large amounts of resources that are scarce on Mars,” said University of Chicago planetary scientist Edwin Kite, who helped lead the study published this week in the journal Science Advances.

“The key elements of our paper are a novel proposal to use engineered nanoparticles to warm Mars’ atmosphere, and climate modeling that suggests this approach could be much more efficient than previous concepts. This is important because it presents a potentially more feasible method for modifying Mars’ climate, which could inform future Mars exploration strategies,” Kite added.

NASA has sent robotic rovers to explore the Martian surface and the InSight Lander to study the planet’s interior. The U.S. space agency’s Artemis program aims to put astronauts in the coming years on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972 in preparation for potential future human missions to Mars.

There are numerous challenges to human settlements on Mars: lack of breathable oxygen, harmful ultraviolet radiation due to its thin atmosphere, salty soil hostile to growing crops, dust storms that sometimes cover much of the planet and more. But its frigid temperatures are a serious impediment.

“We propose to show that the idea of warming Mars isn’t impossible. We hope that our finding encourages the broader scientific community, and the public, to explore this intriguing idea,” said study lead author Samaneh Ansari, a doctoral student in the electrical and computer engineering department at Northwestern University in Illinois.

The median Martian surface temperature is about -65º C. With its tenuous atmosphere, solar heat on the Martian surface readily escapes into space. The proposal would aim to allow liquid water to exist on the surface of Mars, which has water in the form of ice at its polar regions and its subsurface.

The scientists proposed continuously releasing tiny rod-shaped particles — nanorods — into the atmosphere at a rate of about eight gallons (30 liters) per second for years.

“The idea is to either ship the material or better yet, ship the manufacturing tool and make the nanorods on the planet since iron and aluminum are abundant on the surface of Mars,” Ansari said.

The researchers are mindful of the possibility of unintended consequences in terraforming another world for humankind’s benefit. Scientists, for instance, are eager to learn whether Mars has harboured life in the past — or perhaps currently, in the form of subsurface microbes.

“Although nanoparticles could warm Mars, both the benefits and potential costs of this course of action are currently uncertain. For example, in the unlikely event that Mars’ soil contains irremediable compounds toxic to all earth-derived life, then the benefit of warming Mars is nil,” Kite said.

“On the other hand, if a photosynthetic biosphere can be established on the surface of Mars, that might increase the solar system’s capacity for human flourishing,” Kite added. “On the costs side, if Mars has extant life, then study of that life could have great benefits that warrant robust protections for its habitat.”

New Delhi:

Elon Musk and SpaceX have shared stunning pictures of the Earth captured by Space X’s Starship as it completed its first successful flight through space on Thursday, in what was its third attempt. The Starship, which is the world’s most powerful rocket, reached its farthest and fastest flight during this test launch, although it was lost upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, according to SpaceX.

High-definition footage from an onboard camera showed the Starship in space, showing the curve of the Earth in the background as it soared at speeds exceeding 26,000 km per hour.  

“Wild that this is a real picture,” tweeted SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, sharing an image of the rocket in space. SpaceX also shared several images on their official X page, captioning them, “ship in space.”

Wild that this is a real picture pic.twitter.com/V2LWqTOydY

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2024

Ship in space pic.twitter.com/ge5vJ0q9jW

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 16, 2024

Following the mission, NASA administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on their “successful test flight”. “Congrats to @SpaceX on a successful test flight! Starship has soared into the heavens. Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moon—then look onward to Mars,” he wrote on X.

Congrats to @SpaceX on a successful test flight! Starship has soared into the heavens. Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moon—then look onward to Mars. https://t.co/VXq8Vp1sAc

— Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) March 14, 2024

The take-off took place from SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:25 am local time (6:55 pm IST), and was streamed live on X to millions of viewers. 

The Starship, standing at 397 feet tall (90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty), is designed to be fully reusable, boasting a super heavy booster that produces remarkable thrust. During its third launch test, the Starship met several objectives, including testing its payload delivery capabilities and atmospheric re-entry. 

After the launch, the Starship zoomed through space at a speed of 26,000 km per hour, reaching an altitude of over 200 km above sea level. It made its journey halfway around the Earth before beginning its descent over the Indian Ocean. 

However, 49 minutes into the flight, ground control lost all signals of the spacecraft, leading to the declaration that the vessel was “lost,” likely destroyed before it could have a planned hard splashdown. The lower-stage booster also failed to achieve a successful water landing.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk remains optimistic about the Starship’s potential. “Starship will make life multiplanetary,” he wrote on X. 

Starship will make life multiplanetary pic.twitter.com/Ul7ksiAHBZ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2024

SpaceX’s first integrated test ended abruptly in April 2023, when the Starship failed to separate its stages, resulting in the rocket being destroyed over the Gulf of Mexico. A second test in November of the same year showed slight improvement but ended in an explosion over the ocean. 

Each Starship costs SpaceX around $90 million to build. Despite setbacks, SpaceX’s testing approach in the real world has been successful in the past with Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules. With NASA planning a Moon mission in 2026 and China aiming for 2030, SpaceX must demonstrate Starship’s capabilities, including safe flight and refuelling in orbit, to stay competitive.

SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket lifts off on its third launch from the company’s Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. March 14, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

SpaceX’s Starship rocket, designed to eventually send astronauts to the moon and beyond, completed nearly an entire test flight through space on its third try on Thursday, getting farther than ever before, but disintegrated on its return to Earth.

During a webcast of the flight, SpaceX commentators said mission control lost communication with Starship from two satellite systems simultaneously while the spacecraft was re-entering the planet’s atmosphere at hypersonic speed.

The spacecraft at that point was nearing a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean, about an hour after launch from south Texas.

Contact with Starship cut out moments after a live video feed from a camera mounted on the vehicle showed high-definition images of a reddish glow enveloping the silvery spacecraft from the heat of re-entry friction as it plunged earthward.

A few minutes later, SpaceX confirmed that the spacecraft had been “lost” – meaning incinerated or broken apart – during the stress of re-entry.

For reasons that were left unclear, SpaceX opted to skip one of the test flight’s core objectives – an attempt to re-ignite one of Starship’s Raptor engines while it coasted in a shallow orbit. That milestone is considered key to its future success.

Still, completion of many of Starship’s intended flight objectives represented progress in the development of a spacecraft crucial to the growing satellite launch business of SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, and NASA’s moon program.

NASA chief Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on what he called “a successful test flight” in a statement posted on social media platform X. The U.S. space agency is SpaceX’s biggest customer.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell wrote in an X post that the test marked an “incredible day.”

The two-stage spacecraft, consisting of the Starship cruise vessel mounted atop its towering Super Heavy rocket booster, blasted off from the company’s Starbase launch site near Boca Chica Village on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The upper-stage Starship reached peak altitudes of 145 miles (234 km).

The spacecraft far exceeded its two past performances, both of which were cut short by explosions minutes after launch. The company had acknowledged in advance a high probability that its latest flight might similarly end with the spacecraft’s demise before the mission profile was finished.

Engineering goals

Thursday’s flight achieved many of the engineering goals set for the mission: a repeat of successful stage separation during initial ascent; the first test of Starship’s ability to open and close its payload door in orbit; and the transfer of super-cooled rocket propellant from one tank to another during spaceflight.

What SpaceX failed to demonstrate on top of Starship’s re-entry failure and the skipped engine re-ignition test was an attempt to fly the Super Heavy rocket back to Earth, part of SpaceX’s routine strategy of recovering its launch boosters for re-use.

SpaceX officials have said they plan to conduct at least six more test flights of Starship this year, subject to regulatory approval.

The company is required to investigate each test mission failure and deliver its findings and corrective actions to the Federal Aviation Administration for the agency’s approval before the vehicle can fly again.

On the whole, Thursday’s test encompassed a fraction of the remaining demonstrations and missions the vehicle must get through before it is proven safe enough to fly people to space.

Still, Musk is counting on Starship to fulfill his goal of producing a large, multipurpose next-generation spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo to the moon later this decade, and ultimately flying to Mars.

Closer to home, Musk also sees Starship as eventually replacing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the workhorse in the company’s commercial launch business. It already lofts most of the world’s satellites and other payloads to low-Earth orbit.

NASA also has a lot riding on the success of Starship, which the agency is giving a central role in its Artemis program, successor to the Apollo missions that put astronauts on the moon for the first time more than 50 years ago.

While NASA executives have embraced Musk’s frequent flight-testing approach, agency officials in recent months have made clear their desire to see greater progress with Starship’s development as the United States races with China to the lunar surface.