3 years since 1st Starship launch, SpaceX eyes new chapter for rocket
Three years ago, a SpaceX rocket that has become the centerpiece of billionaire Elon Musk 's vision of sending humans to the moon and Mars got off the ground on its maiden voyage.
And then, minutes later, it blew up.
SpaceX, the commercial spaceflight company Musk founded in 2002, has endured a few more fiery demises of the mammoth Starship rocket since that explosive debut. But the company has also hit milestone after milestone as it makes progress in readying the world's largest rocket for trips into deep-space – though progress may be more slow than partners such as NASA would like .
To mark that landmark anniversary, SpaceX recently shared a video looking back at three years of Starship flight tests while also looking ahead to what may be the unrivaled spacecraft's most important mission to date .
Amid SpaceX's work to unveil a new-and-improved version of the Starship rocket, here's a look at just how far Starship has come since 2023 – and how far it has left to go.
SpaceX celebrates 3-year anniversary of Starship's 1st launch
As of April 20, it has been three years since SpaceX launched its gargantuan Starship rocket on its debut flight test from its sprawling headquarters in South Texas known as Starbase . Located near the U.S.-Mexico border, Starbase was approved in May 2025 to become incorporated as its own city with a mayor by Cameron County voters – most of whom are SpaceX employees.
To mark the milestone, SpaceX shared a nearly 25-minute long video on X showcasing the progress the company has made in Starship's development ahead of its next launch.
In the video, Bill Riley, a vice president of Starship engineering, cast endeavors like SpaceX's smaller Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, as well as its Dragon spacecraft that travels in orbit , as building blocks to the grander unveiling of Starship.
"The journey of SpaceX is a journey to give humans access to the solar system and beyond, which is really the goal for Starship," Riley said in the video.
What is Starship? What to know about rocket built for moon, Mars
Standing at more than 400 feet tall when fully stacked, Starship is regarded as the largest and most powerful launch vehicle in the world .
The fully integrated spacecraft is composed of both a lower-stage booster known as Super Heavy, as well as an upper stage simply called Starship. Powered by 33 of SpaceX's Raptor-class engines, the booster provides the initial burst of thrust at liftoff, while the vehicle is where the crew and cargo would ride in orbit after the stages separate.
"Starship is giant, and that scale is not an accident," Riley said in the video. "It's because we need that size to do the things we dream of doing with it."
So what can you expect from Starship in the years ahead?
SpaceX is developing the rocket to be a fully reusable transportation system that can carry huge satellites and other payloads to space , meaning both the rocket and vehicle can return to the ground for additional missions.
In the years ahead, Starship is competing with Blue Origin to develop a lunar lander to help NASA astronauts land on the moon under the U.S. space agency's Artemis program . Musk also has dreams of Starship being the vehicle that transports the first humans to Mars – though in February he announced SpaceX's intentions of shifting its focus to building a lunar city first .
What happened on the debut Starship flight test?
SpaceX's first test of the Starship rocket wasn't exactly a rousing success – nor was it likely expected to be.
The towering rocket got off to a rough start when it exploded just four minutes into its maiden voyage April 20, 2023. The craft was able to launch at SpaceX’s private Starbase site in Texas, but telemetry data revealed that several of the spacecraft's engines had failed, triggering the explosion before the booster and spacecraft could even separate.
Instead, the entire 400-foot integrated rocket crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, since renamed in the U.S. under an executive order as the Gulf of America. SpaceX later confirmed the rocket's flight termination system was activated to destroy the tumbling vehicle before it met its fiery end.
SpaceX, for its part, has intentionally adopted a risk-tolerant philosophy for the rocket's development that views failure as an expected consequence of rapid testing that can still yield valuable data that leads to improvements.
"We learned a lot from the eventual failure of the vehicle in that flight," Joe Petrzelka, a vice president of Starship engineering, said in the recent video.
SpaceX makes progress with Starship in 11 launches to date
Starship has come a long way since its maiden voyage more than three years ago.
The massive rocket has encountered a number of anomalies and failures since its debut, including fiery explosions both on the test stand and mid-flight that have attracted plenty of headlines.
But SpaceX has also managed to demonstrate what an incredible feat of engineering Starship has the potential to become.
Throughout the course of 11 flight tests to date, SpaceX has twice seen Starship deploy mock Starlink internet satellite s, twice reused a Super Heavy booster and three times has caught a returning booster back at the launch site with giant mechanical arms known as "chopsticks." The upper stage, meanwhile, has managed to consistently fly at a suborbital height, traveling halfway around the world while landing in the Indian Ocean.
See photos of SpaceX's Starship megarocket
What's next for Starship? Version 3 could reach orbit.
The next time Starship gets off the ground, it will be an even bigger and more powerful version than SpaceX has ever launched before.
If all goes to plan, SpaceX's next prototype of Starship, known as Version 3, could be the model to reach orbit and also refuel its upper stage midflight. The complex process requires two Starships equipped with docking adapters to meet in orbit to transfer hundreds of tons of super-cooled propellant.
"Once you unlock that capability, the whole solar system is on your doorstep," Charlie Cox, director of Starship's engineering, said in the recent video.
That's why it's no surprise that SpaceX has big hopes that Version 3, also known as V3, will become the iteration of Starship to travel to distant locations like the moon and Mars.
When is the next Starship launch? Elon Musk pushes date to May
But Starship has yet to get off the ground in 2026 .
In an April 3 post on social media site X, Musk indicated that Starship's next launch, which SpaceX refers to as "flight 12," was being targeted for early to mid-May. SpaceX had not announced a specific target launch date as of May 1.
The new launch target was the third time that Starship's 12th overall test flight has slipped in 2026 amid preparations for SpaceX to roll out the larger and more advanced version of the rocket.
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@usatodayco.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SpaceX celebrates 3 years of Starship. What's next for giant rocket?
