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The first-ever launch of SpaceX's upgraded Starship rocket is about a month away, CEO Elon Musk says. The company has been prepping "Version 3" of Starship for a while now, and is targeting early April for the rocket's debut test launch, which will be the 12th overall for the Starship program. "Starship V3 first flight in about 4 weeks," Musk said in a March 7 post on X.The V3 upgrade makes significant changes to Starship's Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage. Both are slightly taller than their predecessors and produce stronger, more efficient thrust using SpaceX's upgraded Raptor 3 rocket engine. Previous Starship iterations were already the biggest and most powerful rockets ever to launch, and V3 will continue to up the ante.

Starship V2 wrapped up its tenure during the Flight 11 launch last October. The mission continued a bounceback from a rocky start to 2025 for the rocket, which saw the Ship upper stage explode during its first three missions that year, in January, March and May. The final two Starship flights last year were deemed complete successes, but SpaceX hit another speed bump during its testing and preparations with V3 rocket hardware.The first V3 Super Heavy booster suffered an accident on SpaceX's test stand in November, delaying the upgraded model's debut by several months as another booster was assembled. In the meantime, SpaceX has nearly completed construction on the second launch pad at its Starbase manufacturing and test facility in South Texas, where the company plans to begin test operations on the Flight 12 booster "in the coming days," the company said in a March 9 post on X. The V3 Starship upper stage for Flight 12, dubbed Ship 39, also recently completed a round of tests to qualify the vehicle before its upcoming launch. "Across several days, engineers tested the vehicle’s redesigned propellant system and its structural strength, including squeeze tests to mimic the forces of future ship catches," SpaceX said in a March 7 post on X.

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Starship is the first-ever launch vehicle designed for full reusability. Its Super Heavy booster has completed three returns to its Starbase pad, where the chopstick-like arms of SpaceX's "Mechazilla" launch towercatch the booster out of the air. The completion of the site's second pad and tower gives SpaceX the option to return Ship as well, for the upper stage's first-ever mid-air catch and recovery. The ability to land and relaunch Starship is critical for SpaceX, which is contracted to design a version of the Ship upper stage as the lunar lander for NASA's Artemis program. The company had originally been tasked with providing a Starship lander for a crewed mission to the moon on Artemis 3 in 2028, but a recent shakeup of NASA's Artemis mission roadmap has tightened that timeline.NASA now plans to launch Artemis 3 in 2027. The mission will fly to low Earth orbit, where Orion, the Artemis crew capsule, will conduct rendezvous and docking maneuvers with either or both Artemis lunar landers.In addition to Starship, NASA selected Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface on future Artemis missions. And, as part of the Artemis restructuring, NASA has indicated a willingness to fly Orion with whichever lander is available when Artemis 3 is ready to launch. Should only one of those vehicles be space-worthy when the time comes, it's likely its competitor will miss out on the opportunity to perform the program's first crewed landing, which is now expected on Artemis 4.