SpaceX is yet to master its Starship spacecraft, but the company is already planning several steps ahead. As per recent updates from company leadership, SpaceX has started offering Starship services to Mars, and it has its first customer already.

Starship Updates

SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell recently posted an update about SpaceX’s Starship program on social media platform X. As per the executive, the private space company is now “offering Startup services to the red planet.” Shotwell also noted that SpaceX is working with the Italian Space Agency on an agreement.

Italian Space Agency President Teodoro Valente shared his excitement for the project in a post on X. As per Valente, the payloads in the mission would be gathering scientific data from Mars. 

“Italy is going to Mars! @ASI_Spazio and @SpaceX have signed a first-of-its-kind agreement to carry Italian experiments on the first Starship flights to Mars with customers. The payloads will gather scientific data during the missions. Italy continues to lead in space exploration!” Valente wrote in his post.

Next Starship Flight

SpaceX is currently making preparations for the launch of Starship Flight 10, which is expected to be held sometime this August, as per previous comments from CEO Elon Musk. At the end of July, SpaceX fired up its Starship Upper Stage on its South Texas launch site. This ship is the second that SpaceX has earmarked for Flight 10, as noted in a Space.com report, since the first exploded on a test stand on June 18 just before a planned static fire test.

A fully-stacked Starship first took to the skies in April 2023. Unfortunately, the last three missions this year, which were launched in January, March, and May, all ended with the upper stage experiencing a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD) before its planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean. 

Elon Musk has revealed SpaceX’s target timeline for the next Starship launch, which will be the tenth in program history.

Musk says SpaceX is aiming for a timeline of roughly three weeks from now, which would come about ten weeks after the previous launch.

Coincidentally, it would bring the two launches 69 days apart, and if you know anything about Elon Musk, that would be an ideal timeline between two launches.

🚨 Just wanted you to know, Starship 10’s projected test flight date, according to Grok, is August 4.

Starship’s ninth test flight took place on May 27.

August 4 is 69 days after May 27.

Do with that what you will. 🚀 https://t.co/IISpT08rIy

— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 16, 2025

SpaceX is coming off a test flight in which it lost both the Super Heavy Booster and the Upper Stage in the previous launch. The Super Heavy Booster was lost six minutes and sixteen seconds into the flight, while SpaceX lost communication with the Ship at 46 minutes and 48 seconds.

Musk is aiming for the tenth test flight to take place in early August, he revealed on X:

Launching again in ~3 weeks

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2025

This will be SpaceX’s fourth test flight of the Starship program in 2025, with each of the previous three flights bringing varying results.

IFT-7 in January brought SpaceX its second successful catch of the Super Heavy Booster in the chopstick arms of the launch tower. The ship was lost after exploding during its ascent over the Turks and Caicos Islands.

IFT-8 was on March 6, and SpaceX caught the booster once again, but the Upper Stage was once again lost.

The most recent flight, IFT-9, took place on May 27 and featured the first reused Super Heavy Booster. However, both the Booster and Upper Stage were lost.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hit SpaceX with a mishap investigation for Flight 9 on May 30.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting July 31 for the launch of Crew-11, the next crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The flight will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, using the Crew Dragon Endeavour and a Falcon 9 booster.

Crew Dragon Endeavour returns

Crew-11 will be the sixth flight for Endeavour, making it SpaceX’s most experienced crew vehicle to date. According to SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, Sarah Walker, Endeavour has already carried 18 astronauts representing eight countries since its first mission with NASA’s Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley in 2020, as noted in an MSN report.

“This Dragon spacecraft has successfully flown 18 crew members representing eight countries to space already, starting with (NASA astronauts) Bob (Behnken) and Doug (Hurley) in 2020, when it returned human spaceflight capabilities to the United States for the first time since the shuttle retired in July of 2011,” Walker said.

For this mission, Endeavour will debut SpaceX’s upgraded drogue 3.1 parachutes, designed to further enhance reentry safety. The parachutes are part of SpaceX’s ongoing improvements to its human-rated spacecraft, and Crew-11 will serve as their first operational test.

The Falcon 9 booster supporting this launch is core B1094, which has launched in two previous Starlink missions, as well as the private Ax-4 mission on June 25, as noted in a Space.com report.

The four-members of Crew-11 are NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, as well as Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov.

Tight launch timing

Crew-11 is slated to arrive at the ISS just as NASA coordinates a sequence of missions, including the departure of Crew-10 and the arrival of SpaceX’s CRS-33 mission. NASA’s Bill Spetch emphasized the need for careful planning amid limited launch resources, noting the importance of maintaining station altitude and resupply cadence.

“Providing multiple methods for us to maintain the station altitude is critically important as we continue to operate and get the most use out of our limited launch resources that we do have. We’re really looking forward to demonstrating that capability with (CRS-33) showing up after we get through the Crew-11 and Crew-10 handover,” Spetch stated.