Countdown To Launch : What to Expect From Starship Flight 10

Starbase, Texas — SpaceX is targeting Sunday, August 24, 2025, for the tenth flight test of Starship, the company’s fully reusable two-stage launch system. The launch window opens at 6:30 p.m. CT (23:30 UTC).

24/7 Countdown To Launch with Status Board & Starbase Cams: https://youtube.com/live/5094TmOH0SU?feature=share

Flight 10 Launch Coverage: https://youtube.com/live/_rT3G5AHQw4?feature=share

Flight 9 Lessons and Hardware Updates

Flight 10 comes less than three months after the Flight 9 test on May 27, where Starship demonstrated multiple firsts — including reusing a Super Heavy booster, executing a deterministic flip maneuver, and completing a full-duration ascent burn with all 33 Raptors.

However, anomalies on both stages shaped changes for this next mission:

• Booster: Flight 9’s aggressive 17° angle of attack experiment caused structural overload of the fuel transfer tube, leading to a methane/LOX ignition and loss of the booster during landing burn. For Flight 10, descent angles will be reduced to lower aerodynamic loads, while still enabling valuable data collection.

• Ship: The upper stage experienced a failure in its fuel tank pressurization diffuser, resulting in methane leakage into the nosecone, abnormal pressure buildup, and skipped payload deployment/in-space burn objectives. A redesigned diffuser has been built, tested, and qualified to more than 10x service life without failure.

Additionally, Ship 36’s static fire anomaly on June 18 destroyed the vehicle due to an undetected COPV failure in the payload bay. That incident led to:

• Lower COPV operating pressures.

• More stringent inspections and proof tests.

• New non-destructive evaluation methods.

• Protective COPV covers to provide damage indication.

These updates are incorporated into Ship 37 and Booster 16, the flight pair for this test.

Booster 16: Flight Objectives

The Super Heavy booster will perform several new and risky flight experiments, expanding on what was first attempted in Flight 9:

• Deterministic flip + boostback burn: Following stage separation, Booster 16 will rotate in a controlled direction to conserve propellant, then perform a boostback burn to target an offshore splashdown zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

• Engine-out landing burn test: During the descent, one of the three central engines will be intentionally disabled. A backup engine from the middle ring will be commanded to light, testing redundancy during landing operations.

• Two-engine hover test: For the final landing phase, Booster 16 will use only two central engines, deliberately hovering above the ocean surface before cutting off and dropping into the Gulf. This simulates precision landing dynamics for future “catch” attempts at Starbase or Cape Canaveral.

• High-data descent profile: Onboard instrumentation will collect detailed measurements of loads, vibrations, and plume interactions to validate design margins ahead of catch-capable flights.

Unlike future operational flights, Booster 16 is not planned to return to the launch tower but will instead perform these experiments over water for safety.

Ship 37: Flight Objectives

The Starship upper stage is the centerpiece of Flight 10, tasked with demonstrating key orbital operations and stressing its thermal protection system:

• Payload Deployment Test: Starship will carry eight Starlink simulators sized to match next-generation Starlink V3 satellites. They will be released into a suborbital trajectory and are expected to burn up during reentry, verifying deployment hardware under flight conditions without creating long-lived orbital debris.

• Raptor Relight in Space: A single Raptor Vacuum engine will be restarted mid-flight — a crucial milestone for orbital insertion, satellite deployment, and future interplanetary missions.

• Thermal Protection Stress Test: Multiple tiles have been deliberately removed from high-stress zones of Ship 37 to evaluate how bare steel and alternative shielding perform under entry heating. In addition:

  • Experimental metallic tiles — including one with active cooling channels — will fly for the first time.

  • Tapered tile edges will test solutions to “hot spots” seen on Flight 6, where plasma intruded at seams.

  • Catch fittings are installed on the vehicle’s sides to assess structural and thermal resilience during entry.

• Flap Structural Test: Ship 37’s entry profile is designed to push the rear flaps to their limits during maximum dynamic pressure, helping validate design margins for control surfaces that will one day enable tower catch and reuse.

Starship’s Path Forward

While Flight 10 is still classed as a developmental test, SpaceX is steadily moving closer to its operational goal: a rapidly reusable super-heavy launch system.

Every test — whether success or failure — generates terabytes of telemetry and video data, feeding directly into next-generation Starship designs now being assembled at Starfactory in Texas and will be in near future in parallel at the new production and test infrastructure in Florida.

The company has stated that only two more flights remain with the current generation of Starship/Super Heavy, with iterative upgrades planned for the vehicles that follow.

Flight 10 will test Starship like never before — from bold new booster landing profiles to pushing the thermal and structural limits of the ship itself. Each milestone brings SpaceX closer to a fully reusable rocket system capable of supporting future lunar and Martian exploration.