Starship Block 2

Block 2 came out of the April 2024 update at Starbase, where SpaceX laid out two successive evolutions of the vehicle to fix what the early prototypes had exposed. The ship grew to 52.1 m, adding 3.1 m to the stack, and its propellant load rose by roughly a quarter. The forward flaps, badly burned on Block 1 re-entries, were made thinner and moved leeward, out of the worst of the heating.

Inside, the avionics were redesigned, the tank stringers were extended and the plumbing runs rearranged. The block was meant to debut third-generation Raptor engines, but the first ship of the series flew with uprated second-generation units instead.

The debut on 16 January 2025 ended with the ship breaking apart over the Caribbean while the booster was cleanly caught by the tower; falling debris forced airline diversions. Flights eight and nine repeated the loss of the upper stage, and in June 2025 another ship of the block exploded during a static fire on the test stand, with a ruptured pressure vessel in the nose as the preliminary cause.

The second half of the year turned the programme around: flights ten and eleven flew the full profile, released Starlink simulators, relit an engine in space and ended in soft splashdowns in the Indian Ocean. The eleventh, on 13 October 2025, was the block's last flight and the last from the original pad before its refit.

Five of the six vehicles built were flown. Block 2 was retired without ever reaching a complete orbit and with a final payload estimate far below the hundred tonnes claimed when it was announced. In exchange it settled the hardest parts: controlled re-entry, in-space relight and payload deployment from the ship's bay.