SpaceX is rolling out Starship 38 to the test site after last month’s explosion

SpaceX is rolling out a brand-new upper stage, the Starship 38, to the test site after recovering from a devastating explosion during the same event that occurred last month.

This new ship is being carried by transportation vehicles and has already stepped out of the Starship factory. It is expected to reach the stand within a few hours.

The first test is likely to be the cryo testing, which will verify the structural integration and thermal performance under extreme conditions. This involves filling the rocket with cryogenic propellants and performing various tests to find potential issues that could compromise the final launch.

The upper stage is crucial for SpaceX’s reusability goals, and there’s no rocket so far that has recovered the second stage after an orbital launch. That said, the company is testing this massive space vehicle to prepare for future missions and has so far conducted 9 tests.

Source – StarshipGazer/X

On Jun 18, 2025, while preparing for the 10th space flight, SpaceX began preps for a static-fire test on the ship 36, which later turned into a full-scale explosion and damaged the test site at Starbase. More importantly, the team had conducted a single-engine static fire on the ship a week earlier, before this anomaly, and was about to perform a six-engine burn.

Early findings suggest that the explosion was caused by the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as COPV, which contains gaseous nitrogen in Starship’s nosecone area. The new ship is expected to contain new measures to prevent such an anomaly for the second time.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk recently said that the Starship Flight 10 could launch in August, but we’ll have to wait for all the test process to be completed.

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