Starship is the reason Elon Musk founded SpaceX. It’s the vehicle that will carry and land humans on Mars.

As SpaceX’s multipurpose spacecraft, Starship will be capable of launching substantial payloads to any destination in the solar system, perform lunar exploration for NASA, allow humans to live and work on Mars, and conduct intercontinental point-to-point transportation to destinations across Earth's surface.

During the third high altitude test flight, SpaceX will test three Raptor engines, including the first-ever three-engine air restart––a critical part of the system’s landing ability.  Starship’s aerosurface flaps will control the ship during its skydiver-like “belly flop” descent.

For landing, three three Raptors will be restarted, and Starship will quickly flip from “belly flop” horizontal to vertical.

This restart, flip, and land is the final element of the test that has so-far not been completed by the two previous high altitude test flights in December 2020 and February 2021.

Overall, the Starship system has two main parts: the Super Heavy booster (first stage) and Starship (second stage) itself. These current suborbital tests are of the second stage only.

During trips to and from space, Starship will serve as the spacecraft itself: deploying large payloads, carrying humans, and serving as the reentry and landing craft––just as the Space Shuttles did from 1981 to 2011.

The overall system (rocket booster and spacecraft) has undergone a few name changes over the years, including Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), and the Mars Colonial Transporter.

In November 2018, the system was formally named Starship, with the booster receiving the name Super Heavy.

In July and August 2019, a Starship prototype called Starhopper performed a 20 meter and 150 meter hop test series to gather information on the Raptor engine’s performance in flight.

In April 2020, NASA selected a lunar variant of Starship as one of three designs to compete for human landing contracts to provide crewed access to the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program.

In operational mode, Starship will be able to take payloads of at least 100,000 kg / 220,400 lb to any location in the solar system.

Image: Pauline Acalin for Supercluster

Located on the U.S.-Mexico border along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, Boca Chica Village was selected by SpaceX in 2014 as the site for the company's privately-owned orbital launch facility.

Initially, Boca Chica was intended to host Falcon Heavy launches, but the plans soon shifted to a more ambitious project: Starship—SpaceX's multi-purpose transportation spacecraft.

Starbase became operational in 2019, beginning with testing campaigns of the Raptor engines that power Starship.

Image courtesy of Tom Cross for Supercluster.

The entire Starship system is designed for complete reusability.

To achieve this, SpaceX has built a landing pad at Boca Chica to enable testing and recovery of Starships.

SpaceX is also building a Super Heavy recovery system that would see the launch pad’s tower catch the booster as it flies back to the launch site for recovery and rapid reuse.

Image: SpaceX