SpaceX’s Starship megarocket may come into its own in 2025.

The 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket system ever built, and it’s designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX believes this combination of brawn and efficiency is the key breakthrough that will allow humanity to achieve a variety of spaceflight feats — including the settlement of Mars, a long-held dream of company founder and CEO Elon Musk.

That vision may become clearer over the next 12 months or so, for Starship appears poised to make a big leap in 2025.

Ramping up the flight rate

Starship has launched six times to date — twice in 2023 and four times in 2024.

The vehicle made a lot of progress on these test flights, all of which flew from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas. On the most recent three, for instance, both Starship elements — the Super Heavy booster and the 165-foot-tall (50 m) upper-stage spacecraft, known as Starship or simply Ship — survived the downward trip through Earth’s atmosphere in one piece.

Keep reading at space.com.

Technion physics Professor Ehud Behar is featured in this article.