How fast does Starship travel?

Starship is a two-stage system: the Super Heavy booster, with 33 Raptor engines, and the Starship ship, with six. In test flights from Starbase, Texas, the booster burns for about two and a half minutes and separates at around 65 km altitude and 5,500 km/h. The ship keeps accelerating for another six minutes until it shuts down its engines at about 150 km, reaching a speed of 26,000-27,000 km/h. SpaceX deliberately keeps it below the orbital 28,000 km/h: that way the trajectory stays suborbital and the ship reenters over the Indian Ocean without needing a braking burn.

The most demanding part isn't the ascent, but the return. With that profile, the ship reenters at over 25,000 km/h, and the heating caused by air compression pushes its ceramic tiles above 1,400 °C. The booster, meanwhile, reverses course, reignites some of its engines to slow down, and lands vertically; in October 2024 it was caught in flight by the launch tower's arms. No other first stage the size of Super Heavy had ever returned this way.

Once Starship operates as a launcher, the ship will reach the 7.8 km/s needed for low Earth orbit, where it will need to receive propellant from other tanker Starships. To travel to the Moon with NASA, in the HLS version, it will need to add about 3 km/s more, and for Mars it will have to exceed Earth's escape velocity, 11.2 km/s. During Martian reentry, with an atmosphere a hundred times thinner, it will enter at over 7 km/s, braking mainly with its belly.