SpaceX's Starship could launch in March. Here's what we know
USA TODAY
We've entered the third month of 2026, and the Starship rocket has yet to make its debut this year. Here's what Elon Musk's SpaceX may have planned.
We've entered the third month of 2026, and SpaceX's gargantuan Starship rocket has yet to make its debut this year.
In fact, the world's largest rocket has not gotten off the ground in nearly five months from SpaceX's Starbase headquarters and company town in South Texas. That's an unusual delay in launch operations for Starship, which SpaceX has reliably tested every one to 4 months since its second-ever flight in November 2023.
Could the gap between flight tests be because SpaceX is making crucial final preparations to a new version of Starship that could be the iteration to embark on key missions in the years ahead to orbit? Indeed, the next time SpaceX rolls out the 400-foot rocket to the launch pad, it will be a revamped design of the vehicle being developed for missions to the moon – and potentially Mars.
Elon Musk, the world's richest man who founded SpaceX in 2002, has previously teased that the next Starship launch – a mission the commercial spaceflight company refers to as flight 12 – could come in early March. The mission would be Starship's 12th overall and first of 2026 following a year of five tests flights that ended in October on a high note.
Here's everything to know about SpaceX's Starship, and when it could launch again
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