SpaceX's Starship, the company's ambitious next-generation megarocket, successfully ignited all 33 of its Raptor engines during its tenth test flight on August 26, 2025. This significant achievement, captured and shared by SpaceX founder Elon Musk, showcased the dense arrangement of these powerful engines on the Super Heavy booster. Each Raptor engine generates more than double the thrust of all four engines on a Boeing 747, with the Super Heavy booster producing approximately 17 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. This positions it as the most powerful rocket ever built, surpassing NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) and the Saturn V rocket.
The tenth Starship flight test, launched from Starbase, Texas, marked a critical advancement in the development of a fully reusable spacecraft. The mission successfully deployed eight Starlink satellite simulators, demonstrating a crucial payload deployment capability for the first time. Additionally, the Starship upper stage successfully reignited a Raptor engine in space, a vital step for future deorbit maneuvers. The vehicle also underwent rigorous testing of its thermal protection system during atmospheric reentry, gathering valuable data on its performance under extreme heat conditions.
The Super Heavy booster executed a boostback burn for a controlled descent and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico as planned. The Starship upper stage, after completing its ascent burn and reaching a suborbital trajectory, deployed its payload and reignited an engine before beginning its controlled reentry. Despite some damage to its rear flaps and a protective skirt during reentry, the vehicle remained under control and executed a landing flip and final burn for a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, just over an hour after launch.
These advancements are pivotal as SpaceX continues to refine its technology for upcoming missions, including NASA's Artemis program. NASA aims to return astronauts to the Moon in 2027 with the Artemis III mission, for which a modified version of Starship has been selected as the human landing system. In parallel, SpaceX is developing future iterations of Starship, with Starship V4, featuring an expanded configuration of 42 Raptor engines, slated for flight in 2027. These developments underscore SpaceX's commitment to pushing the boundaries of space travel and realizing its long-term goals for human exploration beyond Earth.