Musk keeps US plan to return to the Moon in limbo after a year without progress on Starship

SpaceX has managed to catch its breath after three consecutive tests in which its flagship spacecraft exploded in mid-flight and the loss of another vehicle during pre-launch trials. On Wednesday, the 10th test flight of the Starship mega-rocket has returned it, approximately, to where it was in June 2024, when for the first time it managed to get both the Super Heavy booster and its second stage to complete their suborbital flight and return to Earth without exploding, landing gently over the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, respectively, after taking off from the base of Elon Musk’s company on the coast of Texas. At launch, the two parts of Starship together form an imposing 121-meter-high unit, equivalent to a 30-story building.

That achievement is no small feat. Starship is not only the tallest and most powerful craft in the history of space exploration, but also the first orbital-class shuttle to successfully land its upper stage — the craft itself — back on Earth in a vertical and controlled position, powered by its own engines. Of course, this major milestone for an orbital spacecraft comes with a significant catch: the craft has yet to reach Earth orbit. And that is essential for Starship to achieve its two most ambitious goals, which are to fulfill Musk’s promise of sending unmanned craft Mars in 2026 and landing NASA astronauts on the Moon in 2027, culminating the return of humans to Earth’s satellite 55 years after the last Apollo mission.

“This is a great day for NASA and our commercial space partners,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said on social media, congratulating the SpaceX team and saying that “Flight 10’s success paves the way for the Starship Human Landing System that will bring American astronauts back to the Moon on Artemis III.”

The truth is that, in its latest test to date, Starship hasn’t added any significant milestones to what it has achieved before. And since SpaceX hasn’t revealed any timeline for the tests it intends to conduct until Starship becomes a safe human lunar lander, it’s impossible to realistically know if it will achieve this by the currently planned Artemis III launch date, which will be mid-2027 at the earliest. Meanwhile, China has announced that it will land its first astronauts on the lunar surface in 2030.

These are the achievements of Musk’s mega-rocket, and the major challenges ahead, so that it can help the U.S. win the first major space race of the 21st century, aimed at achieving a sustained human presence on the Moon:

What has Starship Flight 10 achieved?

First of all, it snapped a streak of three failed tests, all previously conducted in 2025, which ended with the explosion of at least the second stage. The last test was in May, during test flight 9, and the 10th couldn’t be carried out until three months later because the ship SpaceX was preparing exploded on the ground in June, causing significant damage to the company’s Starbase in Texas.

Wednesday’s was the first Starship test since Musk ended his political adventure as Donald Trump’s advisor in the White House. In addition to once again performing a soft landing of the two parts of the space shuttle — something SpaceX had achieved in 2024 during tests 4, 5, and 6 — the Starship managed to ignite one of its Raptor engines in space. It had also previously achieved this on flight 6, last November; and this maneuver is crucial for the ship to stabilize its trajectory and enter low-Earth orbit in the future. This is always the first step, whether for traveling through space, sending unmanned probes there, or simply deploying satellites. Furthermore, a ship already in orbit needs to ignite its engines to make the always necessary corrections to its trajectory and also to begin its descent back to Earth’s surface.

Starship’s 10th test also served to achieve something new for the craft: simulating the release of satellites into space, using a device inspired by the Pez candy dispenser. This time, they weren’t real satellites, but life-size models, and they didn’t orbit Earth because this flight was suborbital: they followed a parabolic trajectory and fell minutes later, disintegrating upon re-entry into the atmosphere.

Additionally, SpaceX made multiple modifications to the return trajectory of the booster and upper craft, designed to achieve more efficient returns and to gather data to improve those phases of flight in upcoming tests. In that sense, the Super Heavy booster did not return to base and was not caught by the giant robotic grippers of the launch tower itself — something it did in tests 5, 7, and 8, in October 2024, and in January and March 2025 — because that was not the flight plan this time.

What’s Starship’s next big challenge?

For Musk’s plans to take Starship to the Moon and Mars to be viable, the next critical step is getting the upper craft into orbit; and SpaceX would be aiming for a silver lining if it achieves that milestone before the end of 2025. That won’t happen on the next test flight, number 11, which should take place in the coming weeks if SpaceX wants to resume launch momentum after its near-success on Wednesday.

On Flight 10, the main problem was that part of the aft section of the craft appeared to explode 47 minutes into the flight. Also, some of the craft’s fins were damaged during re-entry, but it still managed to land safely in the Indian Ocean. It was expected that both the craft and the booster would explode after completing their splashdowns.

Flight 11 will be the last for version 2 of Starship. This second generation was intended to consolidate the achievements of the first, but SpaceX engineers needed four attempts to stabilize it during flight. According to the space company’s own investigations, the problems of the previous failed flights — and the explosion on the ground — were due to various structural issues that led to depressurization and large fuel leaks.

After a year of no progress, Musk and NASA’s hopes for the craft to finally reach Earth orbit are pinned on version 3 of the upper section of Starship, which is expected to take off for the first time in test 12, scheduled for this fall, according to the few details of its plans leaked by SpaceX.

The only active rockets that rival some of Starship’s capabilities are NASA’s SLS — disposable and extremely expensive to manufacture — and the New Glenn from the space company Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Both space shuttles have already reached low-Earth orbit; they did so during their maiden test flights, in November 2022 and January 2025, respectively. But as of today, neither can carry a spacecraft capable of landing humans on the surface of the Moon. Starship is the U.S.’ only chance to return there before China arrives.

What improvements do you need to get to the Moon?

The third generation of the Starship — which will also carry the new Raptor 3 engines — will also be equipped with the necessary systems for refueling in Earth orbit. In order for it to fire its engines and blast off toward the Moon — or Mars — SpaceX needs to refill the ship’s tanks once it has stabilized in space. Because to get a ship of this size — version 3 will reach 70 meters in height — out of Earth’s gravitational pull, its fuel tanks cannot be full.

SpaceX’s innovative idea is to launch multiple service ships that gradually refuel the main ship. But such a volume of fuel transfer in space has never been achieved before, especially with methane, a propellant rarely used in space rockets until now.

To pull off this in-orbit refueling without wasting multiple spacecraft and rockets, SpaceX also needs to perfect booster recovery and reuse — the one recovered on Test Flight 7 flew again on Flight 9, but exploded — and also something it has never been able to do: achieve the same with the upper stage.

Musk stated last May that SpaceX could attempt to achieve these milestones in 2026, a year later than intended. With these major improvements, Starship will theoretically be able to travel through the solar system. In practice, the system used by SpaceX for its development suggests that numerous tests will be necessary to refine details. Even if Musk’s company were able to resume the pace of progress it had in 2024 and to have these capabilities ready by 2027, NASA will need prior landing and takeoff tests on the Moon without a crew. Only then will the ship be approved for use with astronauts on the Artemis missions.

But Musk and his team aren’t the only ones with challenges ahead. They’re responsible for making the final leg of the journey possible: transferring astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface. Before that, NASA must successfully carry astronauts to lunar orbit in its Orion capsule, something that is planned to take place during the Artemis II mission in 2026, unless there are further delays.

And Mars? Can we fly there in 2026?

In the case of traveling to Mars, Musk’s true dream — and where the magnate himself has promised to send unmanned missions by the end of 2026 — the challenge is even more complex and costly. Even if Starship were to be ready for space travel in the next Martian launch window, reaching the Red Planet’s orbit is one thing; successfully landing there is another, and far more complex. Robotic Martian exploration has seen numerous failed landing attempts: only NASA and the Chinese space agency have achieved complete success.

So, following its trial-and-error strategy, SpaceX plans to launch several Starships to Mars in 2026 — for various tests — and to have its version of the lunar craft ready for the Artemis III mission in 2027 to meet its commitments to its main customer, NASA. Such advances, in such a short time and across two colossal and different projects, would far surpass SpaceX’s historic achievements in recent years.

For starters, Musk’s space company should be able to dramatically increase its launch pace: of the 10 Starship tests to date, two were in 2023, four in 2024, and, so far, another four in 2025. Five successes and five failed tests are the tally so far for the largest and most ambitious rocket in the history of the space race.

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