SpaceX fires up Starship spacecraft ahead of 11th test flight (video)

SpaceX is continuing to gear up for the next flight of its Starship megarocket, which may be just around the corner.

The company conducted a "static fire" test with its latest Starship upper stage recently, firing up its six Raptor engines while the vehicle remained anchored to the launch mount at SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas.

The milestone, which SpaceX announced via X on Monday evening (Sept. 22), is part of the prep work for Starship's 11th test flight. The company has already static-fired the Super Heavy first-stage booster that will fly on that mission.

SpaceX is developing Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, to help humanity settle Mars and embark on other exploration tasks. Both of its elements — Super Heavy and the upper-stage spacecraft, known as Starship or simply "Ship" — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

Starship has flown in its stacked configuration 10 times to date, most recently on Aug. 26. That test launch was a success; both Super Heavy and Ship splashed down in their target zones (the Gulf of Mexico and Indian Ocean, respectively), and Ship deployed eight dummy payloads into space as planned. That had never been done before on a Starship flight.

Flight 10 was a bounce-back mission for Starship; SpaceX had lost Ship prematurely on the previous three test flights, and another one of the upper-stage vehicles exploded on the test stand this past June.

SpaceX has not yet announced a target launch date for Flight 11, which will be the final mission of Starship's current "Version 2" iteration.

The company will soon start flying Starship Version 3, an even bigger vehicle that will be capable of getting cargo and people to Mars. If all goes well with the Version 3 test campaign, the first fleet of uncrewed Starships could launch toward the Red Planet in late 2026, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said.