We Lastly Know When SpaceX May Fly the Greatest Model of Starship But

SpaceX is gearing as much as debut Starship’s Model 3, testing the upgraded rocket’s capacity to succeed in orbit for the primary time as the corporate races to fly missions to the Moon and Mars.

SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk announced on X that Starship’s upcoming launch is in six weeks, scheduling the rocket’s twelfth take a look at flight for as early because the second week of March. The corporate nonetheless has fairly a little bit of testing to do on the newest rocket prototype, however Musk’s announcement does present an estimated timeframe.

World’s greatest rocket

Starship’s Model 2 launched for the eleventh suborbital take a look at flight on October 13, 2025, marking the final time this iteration of the rocket would roll onto the launchpad. The upgraded version, V3, is bigger and geared up with extra environment friendly Raptor engines.

Whereas the second-generation prototype flew on a suborbital trajectory, this model of Starship shall be used for the rocket’s first orbital flights. In response to SpaceX, Starship V3 is the primary iteration of the automobile able to flying to Mars.

The upgraded automobile shall be about 5 ft (1.5 meters) taller, able to carrying extra propellant, and geared up with new docking adapters for in-orbit gasoline switch. So as to put together the rocket for missions past low Earth orbit, the corporate must equip Starship with a ship-to-ship propellant switch system to refuel the automobile in house.

The rocket may also use a extra highly effective and environment friendly model of its engines, the third-generation Raptor engines. The Raptor 3 engines boast 280 metric tons of thrust in comparison with Raptor 2’s 230 metric tons, whereas being lighter in weight and having considerably fewer components.

Tile take a look at

Late final yr, SpaceX stacked the Tremendous Heavy booster at its Starbase Facility in South Texas forward of the upcoming take a look at flight. Though the corporate hasn’t began testing out the automobile on the launchpad but, it might be finishing up Starship-related exams on one other one in all its rockets.

On Sunday, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 25 Starlink satellites launched to orbit on a routine mission. Images of the rocket on the launchpad earlier than liftoff revealed black hexagon tiles on the Falcon 9 payload fairing, the identical ones used for Starship’s thermal safety system.

One thing uncommon on the Starlink 17-20 mission payload fairing was seen in launch pad video previous to immediately’s launch. The black hexagons look very very like Starship thermal safety tiles. pic.twitter.com/4gMBdLxq3a

— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) January 25, 2026

Starship V2 ended its two-year run on a excessive, acing back-to-back take a look at flights late final yr. Though the rocket’s final two flights had been profitable, they adopted a string of mission failures that resulted in a collection of explosions, suggesting that it might take some time for SpaceX to excellent the upgraded model of Starship.

Throughout an interview in September 2025, Musk admitted that there can be a studying curve with the brand new model of Starship since “just about every thing adjustments on the rocket.”