SpaceX's Starship just turned 10 years old. When will it go to Mars?

Starship just reached orbit for the first time, carrying satellites for SpaceX's Starlink program.

Analysts disagree on whether that's a detour or the destination — and what of the company's plans for the Red Planet? Ten years ago, Elon Musk stood on stage at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, and unveiled plans for a giant spaceship to carry people to Mars.

This past Sept.

28 — a decade and a day later — the descendant of that vehicle reached orbit for the first time , on Starship's 14th-ever test flight.

The designs and hardware evolved greatly over those 10 years.

For example, the 2016 design , called the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), employed carbon fiber, but this gave way to the stainless-steel Starship, which SpaceX began testing in 2019 with short hops from its Texas site.

Prototypes flew to high altitude and landed, and some exploded, until SN15 stuck a landing in May 2021.

That same year, NASA selected Starship as the first astronaut lander for its Artemis lunar missions .

The full Starship stack — a Super Heavy booster with a Ship upper stage on top — first flew in April 2023 and failed within minutes.

Three flights followed in less than a year, each reaching space, and each ending with Ship lost on reentry.

During a 2024 test flight, SpaceX moved liquid oxygen between two tanks inside one Ship, the closest it has come to the propellant transfer that any mission to the moon or Mars will require.

In June of that year, the company brought both stages down in controlled splashdowns, and that October the launch tower's mechanical arms caught a returning Super Heavy booster for the first time.

Progress wasn't linear, however.

After a booster catch in January 2025, a string of Ship failures followed, and one upper stage exploded during ground testing that June.