SpaceX moves giant Super Heavy rocket to pad ahead of Starship Flight 10 launch (photos)

overhead view of a giant silver rocket rolling down a lit-up peninsula at night

SpaceX moves its Super Heavy booster to the launch pad in Starbase, Texas, ahead of the planned launch of Starship Flight 10. SpaceX posted this photo on X on Aug. 21, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX has moved its giant Super Heavy booster to the launch pad ahead of Sunday's (Aug. 24) planned liftoff of the Starship megarocket.

The company announced the milestone Thursday (Aug. 21) in a post on X, which featured three photos of the move.

Sunday's launch, from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, will kick off the 10th test flight of Starship, the fully reusable vehicle that SpaceX is developing to send people to the moon and Mars. Liftoff is scheduled during an hourlong window that opens at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT; 6:30 p.m. local Texas time). You'll be able watch the action live on at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, at launch time.

closeup of a large silver rocket being hoisted by the arms of its metallic launch tower — The Starship Flight 10 Super Heavy booster is hoisted atop the orbital launch mount at Starbase, in South Texas. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, consists of two elements — Super Heavy and a 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage known as Starship, or simply Ship. Both are made of stainless steel and powered by SpaceX's next-gen Raptor engine — 33 for Super Heavy and 6 for Ship.

One of the photos in Thursday 's X post is a closeup of those engines, each of which has the word "Raptor" and a pair of stylized wings emblazoned on its nozzle.

closeup of the engines of a large silver rocket — Closeup of Super Heavy's base as it's being hoisted onto the launch mount. (Image credit: SpaceX)

— SpaceX reached space with Starship Flight 9 launch, then lost control of its giant spaceship (video)

— Starship and Super Heavy explained

Both Super Heavy and Ship have passed engine tests ahead of Flight 10's launch. SpaceX will next transport Ship to the pad at Starbase and stack it atop Super Heavy using the launch tower's "chopstick" arms.

Sunday's flight will be the fourth of 2025 for Starship. On all three of this year's launches, SpaceX has lost Ship prematurely — twice less than 10 minutes after launch, with the third failing during its reentry to Earth's atmosphere.

If all goes to plan on Sunday, Super Heavy will make a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and Ship will come down in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.

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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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