Billionaire Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, has indicated his intent to ramp up the frequency of Starship launches ahead of plans for the spacecraft to land humans on the moon and Mars.

SpaceX appears to be on the cusp of another Starship launch.

The upper stage portion of the world’s largest rocket was recently moved to the launch pad at the company’s Texas headquarters as SpaceX makes preparations to conduct another flight test. The update, shared in a series of photos Wednesday, Sept. 17, on social media, comes days after SpaceX recently tested the lower stage rocket booster, known as Super Heavy, at its Starbase facility.

While it’s unclear just when Starship could get off the ground again, all signs suggest SpaceX is rapidly preparing for the 11th overall demonstration of a vehicle that could one day be bound for the moon and Mars. SpaceX has launched Starship 10 times from Texas since tests began in April 2023, the most recent of which was Aug. 26.

That previus test flight, the fourth of 2025, was far and away SpaceX’s most successful Starship demonstration of the year following a string of disappointing launches ending prematurely with the upper stage’s fiery demise.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, has indicated his intent to ramp up the frequency of Starship launches ahead of plans for the spacecraft to land humans on the lunar surface and the Red Planet.

Here’s what to know about Starship, as well as what we know so far about SpaceX’s plans for the spacecraft’s next test flight.

Starship spacecraft moved to launch pad for testing

SpaceX shared three photos on social media site X, which is owned by Musk, that shows the silver upper stage portion of the megarocket being moved to the launch pad at Starbase for preflight ground testing.

The first photo shows the 171-foot vehicle being transported on a road in the dark of night. The other two photos show Starship being held by the giant mechicanl arms of the launch tower known as “chopsticks.”

The vehicle has not yet been mated with the 232-foot lower stage booster, Super Heavy.

When is Starship flight 11 launch date?

SpaceX has not yet announced a target launch date for its next Starship flight 11, but Musk has previously indicated his desire to ramp up testing to one or more a month.

While that hasn’t exactly happened quite yet, the U.S. government has handed SpaceX a few key wins that might ease the company’s pathway to more frequent launches.

In August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at rolling back federal regulations on commercial spaceflight companies – a sign that private sector rocket companies like SpaceX remain crucial to U.S. spaceflight ambitions, even after a public falling out between Trump and Musk.

The move came a few months after the FAA, which licenses commercial rocket launches, approved in May for SpaceX to conduct as many as 25 Starship test flights a year. Starship launched just four times in 2024.

SpaceX has become known for its risk-tolerant philosophy when it comes to Starship’s development. Musk has stressed that rapid and frequent testing, which sometimes leads to explosive ends, can still provide data that helps engineers improve the vehicle’s design.

Was the Starship launch successful?

Starship most recently got off the ground Aug. 26 from SpaceX’s sprawling Starbase – the complex that doubles as a Texas city and the company’s headquarters in South Texas.

The upper stage, the vehicle known as Starship, separated from the rocket booster about three minutes into the flight to continue on its own on a suborbital trajectory and hit two major milestones:

succeeding in deploying eight mock Starlink satellites, a key milestone that SpaceX has so far been unable to attempt on previous flightsreigniting one of its Raptor engines in space for the second time ever, a necessary maneuver to bring a vehicle back to the ground

Re-entering Earth’s atmosphere about an hour into the mission over the Indian Ocean, Starship then fired its engines to make a controlled vertical landing on the ocean’s surface west of Australia before exploding in a fireball.

As for Super Heavy, the rocket booster made a water landing as planned off the Gulf of Mexico, which the U.S. government has renamed the Gulf of America, after completing several in-flight experiments.

What is Starship? How big is Mars-bound rocket?

The Starship, standing 403 feet tall when fully stacked, is regarded as the world’s largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever developed. When fully integrated, the launch system is composed of both a 232-foot Super Heavy rocket and the 171-foot upper stage Starship, the spacecraft where crew and cargo would ride.

Super Heavy alone is powered by 33 of SpaceX’s Raptor engines that give the initial burst of thrust at liftoff. The upper stage Starship section is powered by six Raptor engines that will ultimately travel in orbit.

SpaceX is developing Starship to be a fully reusable transportation system, meaning the rocket and vehicle can return to the ground for additional missions.

In the years ahead, Starship is set to serve a pivotal role in future U.S. spaceflight.

Starship is the centerpiece of Musk’s vision of sending the first humans to Mars, and is also critical in NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon’s surface. Musk aims to send the first uncrewed Starship to Mars in 2026. NASA, meanwhile, has designs on using Starship to ferry Artemis III astronauts from orbit to the lunar surface as early as 2027.

Where is SpaceX located in Texas? What to know about Starbase

Starbase is SpaceX’s company town built about 23 miles from Brownsville in South Texas. The site is located in Cameron County near the U.S.-Mexico border.

As the headquarters for the commercial spaceflight company, Starbase is home to SpaceX’s rocket program and is where the vehicles are both built and often launched.

Starbase made news in May 2025 when Texas voters in Cameron County approved a measure to officially recognize the company’s headquarters as its own town, complete with a mayor and city council. The city designation has been speculated to give greater municipal control of the area to Musk, who has regularly clashed with government regulators over the red tape SpaceX has had to navigate before launches.

Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com