SpaceX laying the Starship foundations for 2026 and beyond

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The Starship program had an eventful year in 2025, with five full-stack test flights, of which only two resulted in the ship landing. SpaceX also began construction of both Giga Bays, one in Starbase and one at Roberts Road. LC-39A in Florida made significant progress in construction, and environmental approval was given for the start of construction at SLC-37.

Production Sites: Starbase and Roberts Road

At Starbase in 2025, SpaceX tore down the old, outdated High Bay and the Stargate building so crews could begin building a Giga Bay.

Currently, the two Mega Bays at Starbase can house a maximum of six workstations. Once finished, Giga Bay will be able to house at least 24 stations. As of the end of the year, the bay is at three levels of columns, with at least two more full columns to go with the roof likely to follow.

Giga Bay Progress in Starbase (Credit: Collen Liedtke for NSF)

A nearly identical bay is also being built at SpaceX’s Roberts Road area in Florida. Currently, SpaceX uses Roberts Road for Falcon 9 refurbishment, Dragon refurbishment, fairing refurbishment, Starlink loading for Falcon 9 flights, Starship launch infrastructure construction, and more.

The Giga Bay, along with the planned Starfactory, will bring Starship construction and refurbishment to Roberts Road as well, making it one of SpaceX’s most critical pieces of land.

As of the end of the year, the Giga Bay at Roberts Road has parts of the fourth level started, but overall steel-wise, both sites are in a very close race to see who finishes first. Once completed, these Giga Bays will allow SpaceX to build Block 4 of Starship, which uses an 80-meter booster.

The Mega Bays in Starbase are not tall enough to support this stretch in height, so SpaceX is sticking with ~71-meter-tall boosters for now.

Roberts Road (Credit: Max Evans for NSF)

SpaceX plans to have three full launch pads in Cape Canaveral, one at LC-39A and two at SLC-37. Even with a completed Giga Bay, crews will not be able to fully construct ships and boosters at Roberts Road until the Starfactory is built.

In the meantime, SpaceX will transport completed and likely-tested vehicles from Starbase on a Marmac 31 Barge. This barge was recently seen dropping off a Liquid Oxygen Tank for LC-39’s tank farm at the turning basin.

This barge will transport ships and boosters horizontally, ensuring Cape Canaveral has a fleet of vehicles for launch operations.

Launch Sites: Starbase Pads 1 and 2, LC-39A, and SLC-37

Over the last 20 months, since May of 2024, SpaceX has been building the second pad at Starbase, Texas. As of the end of the year, the launch pad is nearly complete. While the tower was fully stacked in 2024, the groundwork and trench were built up for most of the first half of 2025 before the new orbital launch mount was installed on May 11, 2025.

Since then, crews have completed the side service structure, which houses all essential cryogenic valves, high-pressure lines, electrical systems, and more, supporting the launch mount itself. As has been stated many times, this is a brand-new design and will be the design for SpaceX going forward, as the launch mount for LC-39A has been installed and is also the same design.

LC-39A in Early December 2025 (Credit: Max Evans for NSF)

LC-39A has made tons of progress this past year, as SpaceX had left it sitting for a few years following the completion of the tower in 2022. Over the past year, a large chunk of the tank farm was built, the trench was dug and built, and the chopsticks have been modified since their original installation in 2022. There are still many pieces of LC-39A that need to be finished before a launch can be attempted, hopefully in the second half of 2026. 

SpaceX recently received environmental approval to begin construction of two launch towers at SLC-37. These two towers, in conjunction with the eventual two operational pads at Starbase and the single at LC-39A, will give the Starship Program a full five launch pads to be able to launch Starships from. The program won’t have all five for a few years, as construction of an entire launch pad and, in the case of SLC-37, an entire complex with a tank farm, takes a few years.

Flight Tests: Flights 7 through 11

This year’s test flights and their associated ground testing could’ve gone better for SpaceX; at least the last two went well. First off, Flight 7, which featured Ship 33 and Booster 14, and was the first flight of a Block 2 ship, lifted off on Jan 16, 2025. The liftoff through stage separation went perfectly, and then Booster 14 became the second booster to be caught by the launch tower.

Ship 33 Stacked on Booster 14 (Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)

Ship 33, however, was lost during the ascent burn after developing a harmonic response in its aft section, which likely caused propellant lines to break. This led to fires in the aft section and the subsequent loss of Ship 33, which then burned up over the Turks and Caicos.

Flight 8, which was Ship 34 and Booster 15 and lifted off on March 6, 2025, went just about the same way as Flight 7. Liftoff and ascent went nearly perfectly as Booster 15 came back to be caught by the tower, becoming the third booster to be caught, and also the last booster to be welcomed by the chopsticks as of the end of 2025. Ship 34, however, was lost during ascent due to fires in the engine compartment, which was likely caused by incorrect preloading on the engine mount bolts.

Booster 15 about to be caught by Pad 1 (Credit: BocaChicaGal for NSF)

Heading into Flight 9, SpaceX wanted to right the ship and at least get the ship to the coast phase and a successful reentry. During Flights 7 and 8, SpaceX planned to conduct heat-shield tile experiments to collect data. Unfortunately, on Flight 9, crews still won’t get the data they wanted.

Flight 9, which was Ship 35 and Booster 14-2 and lifted off on May 27, 2025, marks the first-ever reflight of a super-heavy booster for the Starship program.

Booster 14-2 would complete a perfect lift off and splashdown in the Gulf using 29 reused Raptor engines, marking another milestone in the program. Ship 35 reached coast phase, but due to a leak in the methane pressurization diffuser in the forward dome, the vehicle lost all control and tumbled into reentry, like Ship 28.

Ship 37 and Booster 16 Lifting off from Pad 1 as the exhaust scorches the BQD (Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)

Flight 10 was supposed to be at the end of June or early July of 2025, but encountered a setback when Ship 36, the ship slated for the flight, exploded during a six-engine static fire attempt on June 18, 2025. This resulted in the loss of the ship and significant damage to the Masseys ship static fire stand, which still isn’t fully operational as of the end of 2025, but is close.

With the loss of Ship 36 and the ability to static fire ships, SpaceX switched to Ship 37 and then created a ship adapter and umbilical adapter to be able to static fire ships on Pad 1’s launch mount. With this move, the launch was delayed till end of August. On Aug 26, 2025, Ship 37 and Booster 16 lifted off with the hope of erasing the ship failures of the first half of the year.

Booster 16 would complete a perfect liftoff and splashdown in the Gulf, with Ship 37 making it to coast phase with no apparent issues. Ship 37 then completed all objectives by deploying the Starlink simulators and the in-space Raptor relight, both of which SpaceX had been trying to complete on a Block 2 ship since Ship 33. With the in-space test completed, Ship 37 then re-entered and landed in the Indian Ocean in one piece.

The last Flight Test of 2025, Flight 11, wanted to build on the success of Flight 10 and end Block 2 on a high note. Ship 38 and Booster 15-2 would repeat Flight 10, completing all in-flight objectives, with both vehicles successfully splashing down in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

With that last launch from Pad 1 at Starbase, which helped support all 11 Full Stack launches and even two ship static fires, it was demolished. This pad will be upgraded to the new specifications seen at Pad 2 at Starbase and over at Cape Canaveral.

Block 3

With Block 2 completing its flights in 2025 and the new launch pads coming online, SpaceX now needs Block 3 vehicles to launch from them. Block 3 will be a near-clean-sheet design for the booster and an upgraded design for the ship. During this past year, SpaceX built Booster 18 and Ship 39, which were slated to be the first full-stack Block 3 flight for Flight 12.

Booster 18 with its LOX Tank blown out (Credit: Ceaser G for NSF)

However, Booster 18, while undergoing pneumatic pressure testing at Masseys, appeared to have failed a Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel (COPV), which caused the Liquid Oxygen tank to rupture. This resulted in SpaceX needing to speed-stack Booster 19 in 26 days to try to offset the loss of Booster 18, which is the fastest SpaceX has ever stacked a booster in the Starship program.

As for Ship 39, it’s still in Mega Bay 2, waiting for the cryogenic proof station at Masseys to be ready. Overall, SpaceX had an eventful year with Starship and hopes to continue the success of Flights 10 and 11 with Flight 12.

Featured Image: Booster 15-2 and Ship 38 Liftoff for Flight 11 (Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)

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