After two explosions, SpaceX has redesigned Starship: Here’s when the next launch is and how to watch

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is gearing up for another trial of its massive Starship rocket system with a tentative date announced for Sunday 24 August. This will be the tenth test flight since April 2023 and the fourth this year of the largest rocket ever constructed.

So far in 2025, the space startup has had a run of failures with the three previous attempts this year along with the fiery destruction of Ship 36, intended to be the tenth test flight, due to “an anomaly” while on the test stand in June. The company has investigated the issues with oversight from the FAA, NASA, NTSB and the US Space Force and says that it has used the lessons learned to help with tweaking the design of the next generation Starships.

SpaceX tweaks the design of Starship

During the ninth flight test of Starship, the company attempted “a significantly higher angle of attack than previous flights during its descent back to Earth” of roughly 17 degrees with the Super Heavy booster. It is believed that this resulted in a structural failure of a fuel transfer tube on the booster which allowed methane and oxygen fuels to mix and then ignite causing an explosion about a half mile above the gulf.

SpaceX says that it has redesigned grid fins on future Super Heavy boosters and reduced the number from four to three but increase the aerodynamic control surfaces by 50 percent as well as strengthening them. The hope is that this will allow for higher angles of attack by aiding boosters’ trajectories during descent. These features will not be present on flight test 10.

Other tests are scheduled to be performed with the upper stage during the tenth flight test of Starship. Specifically, stress testing vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry. Some tiles have been removed and others replaced with alternative materials and one with an active cooling system.

How to watch Starship’s tenth flight test

SpaceX says that the schedule for the tenth flight test is “dynamic and likely to change” but could launch as soon as Sunday 24 August with the launch window opening at 6:30 pm CT (7:30 pm ET/ 4:30 pm PT).

The commercial spaceflight company will start a live webcast of the flight test roughly 30 minutes prior to liftoff. You can live stream the event on SpaceX’s X account or on the Starship Tenth Flight Test website.

Like the previous Starship flight tests, the tenth will lift off from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas. The Super Heavy booster will not return to base, instead “attempting several flight experiments to gather real-world performance data on future flight profiles and off-nominal scenarios.” After which it will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico at a designated landing point.

The upper stage of Starship will continue on a trajectory that will take it to the Indian Ocean where it will splash down off the west coast of Australia.

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