SpaceX Nearing First Flight of 'Block 3' Starship-Super Heavy
Six months ago, SpaceX flew its final 'Block 2' Starship-Super Heavy launch vehicle, concluding test flights in 2025 with two successes in five attempts and another year passed without reaching orbit. This year, it is hoped that the vehicle will make major progress for several stakeholders, including NASA to enable crewed lunar landings.
In an effort to begin flights with the new 'Block 3' version of Starship-Super Heavy, significant testing has been taking place in recent weeks, while behind schedule due to hardware failures. Back on March 18th, Super Heavy Booster 19 was placed onto 'Starbase Pad 2' with just ten engines installed for a momentary static fire that verified new systems on the ground and vehicle. A month later, the booster returned to the pad with thirty-three engines installed for a full static fire.
First 33-engine static fire for Super Heavy V3 pic.twitter.com/m3swZHF7iQ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 16, 2026
Meanwhile, over the Massey's test site, Ship 39 has undergone its own test campaign, culminating in a six-engine static fire on April 14th. That static fire is the first to take place at Massey's since Ship 36 detonated during its test campaign.
For 'Block 3' of Starship-Super Heavy, both the Ship and Booster have a few technical changes. On the Ship side, the thermal protection tiles have been revised and added to more areas, like the back of the aft flaps, and redesigned commodity connection points. For the Booster, its grid fins have grown and integrated catch points, while removing one of them, while its interstage is now a permanent part. Both the Ship and Booster also use the new 'Raptor 3' engines, with their 280 tons of thrust, and built-in heat protection systems, which allows for the removal of that hardware from both vehicles.
A few upgrades are already planned for 'Block 3', such as increasing 'Raptor 3' thrust to 300 tons, adding three more engines to the ship, for six vacuum and three sea level, and a proper payload door.
Validation testing on a Raptor 3 performing a Starship V3 ascent burn. Multiple versions of this test will cover the different conditions seen by Starship’s three inner engines during its initial climb to space pic.twitter.com/Rrd4rEuGqt
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 3, 2025
2026, with eight and a half months left, is going to be a critical year for Starship-Super Heavy. The vehicle must make it to orbit to perform a Ship-to-Ship propellant transfer to enable a crewed lunar landing in 2028, which itself may need fifteen flights of the vehicle. Orbital flights are also needed for 2027's Artemis III mission to test Starship's lunar lander variant in Earth orbit.
Assuming Starship-Super Heavy's upcoming twelfth flight test goes well and no major issues need to be fixed, the vehicle's thirteenth test flight could head into orbit, a first for the program since launches began in April 2023.
