Starship is a two-stage fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by American aerospace company SpaceX. On 20 April 2023, with the first Integrated Flight Test, Starship became the most massive and most powerful vehicle ever to fly. SpaceX has developed Starship with the intention of lowering launch costs using economies of scale. SpaceX aims to achieve this by reusing both rocket stages by catching them with the launch and integration tower, increasing payload mass to orbit, increasing launch frequency, mass-manufacturing the rockets and adapting it to a wide range of space missions. Starship is the latest project in SpaceX's reusable launch system development program and plan to colonize Mars.
Starship's two stages are the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft. Both stages are equipped with Raptor engines, the first flown and mass-produced full-flow staged combustion cycle engines, which burn liquid methane (natural gas) and liquid oxygen.
As of 2025, Starship is in development with an iterative and incremental approach, involving test flights of prototype vehicles. As a successor to SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, Starship is intended to perform a wide range of space missions. For missions to further destinations, such as geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars, Starship will rely on orbital propellant refilling; a ship-to-ship propellant transfer demonstration is expected to occur in 2025. SpaceX also plans other versions of the Starship spacecraft, such as cargo (deploying SpaceX's second-generation Starlink satellite constellation) and human spaceflight (the Human Landing System variant will land astronauts on the Moon as part of the Artemis program, starting in 2027).
