Next SpaceX Starship Flights Leading to Lunar Landing and Unmanned Mars

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SpaceX had a very successful Flight 10 of Starship. They will have one more flight of the Version 2 Starship and booster. They had a successful engine relight and soft landing of Starship in flight 10.

They wanted to prove engine relights of Starship before going to real orbit. They went sub-orbital so that STasrhip version 2 would de-orbit by itself if there was no engine relight. This was to prevent dangerous space junk situation if they could not relight to de orbit.

I could see SpaceX going to real orbit with the last version 2 which will be the same hardware as was successfully flown in flight 10. They could deploy 2-8 real starlink version 3. Those would be real but would be functional test Version 3 that would not be permanent. Flight 11 would be in late September or October. SpaceX will have a monthlyish launch cadence for Starship for the remainder of 2025.

If things go right
flight 11 -last version 2 September,
flight 12 October first version 3 booster and starship,
November and December version 3 starships going forward.

2026 will see increasing cadence to weekly by about March 2026. There will be a lot of missions working on refueling and proving out the operations and technology for the lunar landing for NASA Artemis 3. They will also be trying to get the refueling sorted out for an unmanned Mars mission at the end of 2026.

Speaking at the Smallsat Symposium here Feb. 6 2025, Gary Henry, a senior adviser at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and a former SpaceX executive, said the agency was working with SpaceX to examine how Starship’s in-space refueling capabilities could support a broader range of users.

Starship requires the use of in-space propellant transfer to enable the vehicle to travel beyond Earth orbit, such as to the moon. In that architecture, tanker Starships would deliver liquid oxygen and methane propellants to a depot in orbit. That depot would then be used to refuel a Starship for travel beyond LEO.