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SpaceX will launch Starship's 9th test flight next week, Elon Musk says

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"Just before the Starship flight next week, I will give a company talk explaining the Mars game plan in Starbase, Texas, that will also be live-streamed on X."

The world's largest rocket launches into a blue sky on SpaceX's Flight 7.
SpaceX's Starship megarocket launches on its seventh test flight, on Jan. 16, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX's Starship megarocket will fly again next week, if all goes according to plan.

Elon Musk announced that timeline target in a Tuesday evening (May 13) X post, which also included another nugget of news that space fans will find interesting.

"Just before the Starship flight next week, I will give a company talk explaining the Mars game plan in Starbase, Texas, that will also be live-streamed on X," Musk wrote in the post.

a tall silver spacecraft fires its engines on a test stand beneath a blue sky

SpaceX conducts a long-duration static fire test with a Starship upper stage on May 12, 2025 ahead of the vehicle's upcoming test flight. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Starship and Mars are closely intertwined. SpaceX is developing the fully reusable vehicle — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — to help humanity settle the Red Planet, a long-held dream of Musk's.

SpaceX has not announced a precise date for the upcoming test flight, which will be the ninth for a fully stacked Starship vehicle. However, notices to pilots and mariners suggest that May 21 is the working target, pending approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The FAA is overseeing SpaceX's investigation into what happened on Flight 8, which launched on March 6. Starship's Super Heavy first stage performed well on that mission, but the vehicle's upper stage — known as Starship, or simply Ship — exploded less than 10 minutes after liftoff. Flight 7, which lifted off in January, had the same basic outcome.

The FAA must approve SpaceX's mishap report, and any corrective actions the company has taken, before Flight 9 can proceed. This hasn't happened yet, as far as we know, but Musk appears confident that those boxes will be ticked by next week.

Related stories:

— SpaceX loses Starship rocket stage again, but catches giant Super Heavy booster during Flight 8 launch (video)

— Starship and Super Heavy explained

— Will 2025 be the year of Starship? SpaceX's megarocket is growing up.

SpaceX has been prepping the Flight 9 Starship vehicle for some time now; it has already performed "static fire" engine tests with the Super Heavy and Ship that will conduct the test flight.

That Super Heavy is special, by the way: It's the same vehicle that flew on Flight 7. (The booster came back to Starbase that day and was caught by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms, as also happened on Flight 8.) Flight 9 will mark the first reuse of a Starship stage.

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Mike Wall
Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer

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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