Fourteen flights of the largest rocket ever built, from the pad that Flight 1 destroyed to a booster caught out of the sky by a tower and, on Flight 14, the first ship in orbit. One card per flight: what was tested, what worked, what broke, and what SpaceX changed before the next one. Flight 15 is provisionally set for no earlier than 8 November. Updated 16 October 2026.
Starhopper Goes Up 150 Metres and Comes Back
A single Raptor engine under a water-tower-shaped test article. On 27 August 2019 Starhopper rose about 150 metres at Boca Chica, translated sideways and landed on a concrete pad. It was the last flight of the vehicle. • Vehicle: Starhopper, one Raptor • Altitude: about 150 m • Result: success, programme retired the article afterwards It proved almost nothing about the eventual rocket except the one thing that mattered at the time: that a full-flow staged-combustion methane engine could hold a vehicle up and put it down again.
SN8 Flies to 12.5 km and Lands Too Fast
On 9 December 2020 SN8 flew to about 12.5 kilometres, shut its engines down one at a time, fell belly-first through the atmosphere under aerodynamic control, and then flipped upright for landing. Low header tank pressure starved the engines during the flip and the vehicle hit the pad at speed and exploded. • Vehicle: SN8, three Raptors, no booster • Altitude: about 12.5 km • Result: flight profile flown, landing failed Everything up to the last six seconds worked. The belly flop, which nobody had flown before, was the point of the test and it was never seriously in doubt again.
SN15 Lands Intact
On 5 May 2021, after four prototypes had been destroyed on landing, SN15 flew the same profile and stood there afterwards with a small methane fire at its base. It was the first Starship upper stage to survive a flight. • Vehicle: SN15 • Altitude: about 10 km • Result: success Two and a half years then passed before anything flew again, while the booster, the launch mount and the regulatory approval for an orbital attempt were built.
Flight 1. The Pad Loses
20 April 2023, 13:33 UTC. Booster 7 and Ship 24, Block 1, from OLP-1. Thirty-three Raptors, several of which failed during ascent. The stack did not separate, tumbled, and the flight termination system took about forty seconds longer than expected to destroy it. The vehicle broke up roughly four minutes after liftoff. • Launch outcome: failure • Booster landing: precluded • Ship landing: precluded • The other damage: the launch mount had no flame trench and no deluge. The exhaust excavated the pad and threw concrete and sand for hundreds of metres SpaceX spent the following seven months building a water-cooled steel flame deflector and rewriting the termination system. Flight 1 is the only flight of this programme where the ground equipment failed worse than the rocket.
Flight 2. Hot Staging Works, Both Stages Do Not
18 November 2023, 13:02 UTC. Booster 9 and Ship 25, from OLP-1. All thirty-three engines ran to separation. The vehicle hot-staged for the first time, lighting the ship's engines while still attached to the booster, and it worked. The booster then exploded during its boostback burn over the Gulf. The ship continued to about 148 kilometres before its own termination system fired, close to engine cutoff. • Launch outcome: failure • Booster landing: failure, over the Gulf • Ship landing: precluded • The new pad: the water deluge system held, and the mount was reusable
Flight 3. Space, and a Ship That Did Not Come Back
14 March 2024, 13:25 UTC. Booster 10 and Ship 28, from OLP-1. The first flight recorded as a launch success. The ship reached its planned suborbital trajectory, opened and closed the payload door, and ran a propellant transfer demonstration between its own internal tanks for NASA. • Launch outcome: success • Booster landing: failure, lost during the landing burn over the Gulf • Ship landing: failure, lost during reentry over the Indian Ocean • Attitude control: the ship lost roll control in the coast phase, which is why the in-space Raptor relight was skipped
Flight 4. Both Halves Reach the Water Under Control
6 June 2024, 12:50 UTC. Booster 11 and Ship 29, from OLP-1. The first flight on which both stages completed their landing sequences. The booster performed a controlled splashdown in the Gulf. The ship survived reentry and put itself down in the Indian Ocean. • Launch outcome: success • Booster landing: controlled, Gulf • Ship landing: controlled, Indian Ocean • The image everyone kept: a forward flap burning through during entry, plasma visible around the hinge, while the vehicle kept flying The flap survived long enough to steer the landing flip. It is the flight that made the heat shield a solvable engineering problem rather than an open question.
Flight 5. The Tower Catches the Booster
13 October 2024, 12:25 UTC. Booster 12 and Ship 30, from OLP-1. Seven minutes after liftoff a 71-metre booster flew back to the pad it had launched from and was caught in mid-air by two arms on the launch tower. It was attempted on the first try, and it worked on the first try. • Launch outcome: success • Booster landing: success, caught at OLP-1 • Ship landing: controlled, Indian Ocean • The rule: thousands of criteria had to be green and a single manual go command given, or the booster would have diverted to the sea No rocket stage had ever been caught by its launch tower. The point of doing it is that a booster that lands on the tower needs no legs, no landing pad and, in principle, no time between flights.
Flight 6. A Relight in Space and a Toy Banana
19 November 2024, 22:00 UTC. Booster 13 and Ship 31, from OLP-1. The ship relit a single Raptor in space, which is the manoeuvre a deorbit burn requires and therefore the precondition for ever flying Starship to orbit with people or payload aboard. The declared payload was a plush banana, hung in the cabin as a zero-gravity indicator. • Launch outcome: success • Booster landing: controlled splashdown, catch aborted at OLP-1 • Ship landing: controlled, Indian Ocean • Why the catch was waved off: tower hardware criteria were not met, so the automated system diverted the booster to the Gulf, exactly as designed
Flight 7. Block 2 Arrives and Is Lost Over the Caribbean
16 January 2025, 22:37 UTC. Booster 14 and Ship 33, the first Block 2 vehicles, from OLP-1. The booster was caught by the tower for the second time in the programme's history. The ship was lost about eight and a half minutes into flight, and debris fell over the Turks and Caicos. • Launch outcome: failure • Booster landing: success, caught at OLP-1 • Ship landing: precluded • Payload: ten Starlink simulators, never deployed • Cause as investigated: propellant leak and fire in the aft section, associated with harmonic response in the new Block 2 design The airspace closures that followed were the first time this programme visibly cost other people their afternoon.
Flight 8. The Same Failure Again
6 March 2025, 23:31 UTC. Booster 15 and Ship 34, from OLP-1. The booster was caught for the third time. The ship lost several engines and was destroyed in the upper atmosphere, again before deploying its four Starlink simulators, and again scattering debris across airspace that had to be cleared. • Launch outcome: failure • Booster landing: success, caught at OLP-1 • Ship landing: precluded Two consecutive losses of the same stage at roughly the same point in flight. The booster had become routine and the ship had become the problem, which is the reverse of where the programme started.
Flight 9. The First Reflown Booster
27 May 2025, 23:36 UTC. Booster 14 flying a second time, with Ship 35, from OLP-1. The first reuse of a Super Heavy, and the point of the whole tower-catch exercise. No catch was attempted on this flight; the booster was expended on a hard water landing test profile and was lost. • Launch outcome: failure • Booster landing: failure, Gulf • Ship landing: failure, lost during reentry • Payload: eight Starlink simulators, not deployed after the payload door failed to open The ship also lost attitude control before entry. Three flights in a row had now failed in the upper stage, and SpaceX stopped flying for three months.
Flight 10. Everything the Ship Was Supposed to Do
26 August 2025, 23:30 UTC. Booster 16 and Ship 37, from OLP-1. Delayed about two months because the ship originally assigned to the flight was destroyed during ground testing. The booster lit all thirty-three engines, lost one on ascent, flew the rest of the profile anyway and splashed down in the Gulf while deliberately simulating an engine-out condition. • Launch outcome: success • Booster landing: controlled, Gulf • Ship landing: controlled, Indian Ocean • Payload: eight Starlink simulators, all deployed • In space: a single Raptor relit • Reentry: substantial damage to the engine section, and the ship still splashed down within three metres of its target Three metres, after a deliberately damaged entry, is the number that ended the crisis of the previous three flights.
Flight 11. Tiles Removed on Purpose
13 October 2025, 23:23 UTC. Booster 15 flying a second time, with Ship 38, from OLP-1. The last flight of Block 2 and the last flight from Pad 1 before it was taken apart for refitting. Twenty-four of the booster's engines were on their second flight. • Launch outcome: success • Booster landing: controlled, Gulf. One Raptor failed on the boostback burn and relit for the landing burn • Ship landing: controlled, Indian Ocean, on target • The test: several heat shield tiles were removed before flight to find out what the airframe would do without them. The ship came back mostly undamaged Block 2 therefore ended with the two things it had failed at all year, a clean reentry and an accurate splashdown, done twice in a row.
Flight 12. Block 3, a New Pad, and a Booster That Could Not Slow Down
22 May 2026, 22:30 UTC. Booster 19 and Ship 39, the first Block 3 vehicles, from OLP-2. Seven months between flights, because Pad 1 was being rebuilt and Booster 18, originally assigned here, was scrapped after severe damage in testing. • Launch outcome: success • Booster landing: failure. After hot staging, only 20 of the intended 33 engines relit for the boostback burn, most failing at startup, and the burn was aborted after a few seconds. One engine relit for landing and the booster hit the water at speed • Ship landing: controlled, Indian Ocean, with a two-engine landing flip as planned • Payload: 20 mass simulators and two modified Starlink V3 satellites, all deployed. The two live satellites filmed the ship in space and inspected its heat shield • Not attempted: the in-space Raptor relight was skipped A ship carrying cameras to photograph its own heat shield in orbit is the sort of test you only design once the vehicle is reliable enough to be worth inspecting.
Flight 13. Real Satellites, and a Ship That Survived Falling Over
24 July 2026, 22:51 UTC. Booster 20 and Ship 40, from OLP-2. Liftoff, hot staging and boostback were all nominal. The landing burn was not: only 10 of the planned 13 engines lit, five more were lost during the burn, and Booster 20 hit the water hard. • Launch outcome: success • Booster landing: failure, Gulf • Ship landing: controlled, Indian Ocean • Payload: 20 Starlink V3 satellites, about 34,100 kg, the first deployment of real operational-design satellites rather than mass simulators. They flew the ship's trajectory and burned up as planned • The new thing: after the simulated landing the ship splashed down and tipped over, as it always does, and for the first time survived it. SpaceX recovered imagery of the tiles, the flaps and the engine bay after the fact Two consecutive Block 3 flights have now put the ship exactly where it was aimed and lost the booster on the way home. The booster problem is engine relight reliability, and it is the only thing standing between this programme and a routine one.
Flight 14. Into Orbit, and Down Nearly Seven Hours Early
28 September 2026, 12:48 UTC. Booster 21 and Ship 41, from OLP-2. The first Starship flight planned for orbit, and the first to get there. One of the six Raptors on the ship shut down early during ascent. Flight control first announced that the ship would not commit to orbit, then confirmed it still had enough redundancy and went ahead with the orbital insertion burn. • Launch outcome: success • Orbit: reached, at roughly 275 km • Payload: 26 Starlink V3 satellites for Group 31-1, all deployed. Three of them carried cameras to photograph the heat shield • Booster landing: controlled, Gulf. Several engines shut down on the way down and the landing held • Ship landing: controlled, Pacific, at about 15:57 UTC. The ship then tipped over and exploded on the water The plan was six orbits and a splashdown off Chile almost ten hours after launch. SpaceX took the first opportunity after the satellites were out to bring the ship home, and the flight lasted a little over three hours.
The Scoreboard After Fourteen Flights
Counted from the launch tables as of 16 October 2026. • Flights: 14, from April 2023 to September 2026 • Launch outcome: 9 successes, 5 failures. All five failures were Flights 1, 2, 7, 8 and 9 • Booster caught by the tower: 3 times, on Flights 5, 7 and 8 • Booster controlled splashdown: 5 times. Lost on 5 flights, precluded on 1 • Ship controlled splashdown: 8 times, every flight since Flight 10 and every Block 3 flight so far • Boosters reflown: 2, on Flights 9 and 11 • Orbit reached: once, on Flight 14. The thirteen flights before it were deliberately suborbital or transatmospheric The largest rocket ever built flew thirteen times before anyone put it into orbit, because until the ship came home reliably there was no reason to leave one up there.
Where This Came From, and When
Compiled 5 September 2026 and brought up to date on 16 October 2026 with Flight 14. Anything dated after that is a published plan, and published plans move. Flight dates, times, vehicle serial numbers, launch sites, payloads, payload masses and the three outcome columns are taken from the launch tables in the Wikipedia article "List of Starship launches", which is maintained against SpaceX's own webcasts and statements. The per-flight narrative detail for Flights 10 to 14 comes from the same article's flight notes. Photographs are Wikimedia Commons files of the vehicles, the tower and Starbase. SpaceX imagery of individual flights is not freely licensed, so several cards carry a picture of the hardware rather than of the flight itself.