The newest city in the Rio Grande Valley isn’t really a “city” in any traditional sense.
Yes, it has residents and, yes, it has elected officials. But it also is home to sleek, towering rockets that regularly thunder high into the sky – and a galactic name worthy of the cosmic ambitions it facilitates: Starbase.
The city designation for Starbase is a recent addition. What the massive complex located in South Texas is best known for, though, is its status as the headquarters for SpaceX.
The commercial rocket company founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk hosts many of its launch operations at Starbase, which doubles as the home of many of its employees as well. Perhaps most notably, that includes the development and testing of SpaceX’s famous – or infamous, depending on your perspective – megarocket known as Starship.
Here’s everything to know about Starbase ahead of SpaceX’s 10th Starship flight test from the South Texas site.
What is Starbase? What to know about SpaceX city in Texas
A view of the SpaceX Starbase facility on June 5 in Starbase, Texas.
Under construction since the 2010s, Starbase is a company town built about 23 miles from Brownsville in South Texas. The site is located in Cameron County, Texas, about 180 miles south of Corpus Christi near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Starbase is home to SpaceX’s rocket program and is where the vehicles are both built and often launched. The complex, about 1.5 square miles in size, houses a landing pad, launch facility, launch control center and tracking station for SpaceX.
In July 2024, Musk announced his intentions to move SpaceX, as well as social media platform X’s headquarters, from California to Starbase in Texas. The move was in response to his personal frustrations over a public school policy in California regarding transgender students.
Did Elon Musk make SpaceX launch site a Texas city?
Before the most recent Starship test in May, Starbase had made news when Texas voters in Cameron County approved a measure to officially recognize the company’s headquarters as its own town, complete with a mayor and city council.
The move came after Musk first proposed incorporating Starbase as a city in 2021. A petition in December then paved the way for May’s vote.
Of the 283 people eligible to cast ballots in Saturday’s Cameron County special election, 212 voted in favor of the measure while just six voted against it, according to results published online by the Cameron County Elections Department.
Starbase controversy as officials vote to restrict access to new town
A view shows signs of Memes St. and LBJ Blvd, the streets that will be closed to thru traffic, after it was approved during a June 23 public meeting.
The city designation has been speculated to give greater municipal control of the area to Musk, who has regularly clashed with government regulators over the red tape SpaceX has had to navigate before launches.
And in late June, Starbase officials began exercising some of that control with a vote passing a law to close several of the city’s public streets to outsiders. On June 23, the Starbase City Commission approved requests from SpaceX to install gates near four intersections that would prevent much of the public from accessing a large part of the city.
Residents attend a public meeting June 23 about proposed new zoning and map at Elon Musk’s SpaceX town of Starbase’s temporary city hall, in Brownsville, Texas.
The move riled many residents and longtime property owners, about 100 of whom packed a small meeting room inside the city’s community building in June to voice their concerns before the measure was passed.
Some critics opposed SpaceX, election
While many local officials have lauded SpaceX for the investment and employment opportunities the company has brought to the region, not all have been happy with its space program.
Some activists who have regularly protested and opposed Musk’s expansion efforts have been critical of what they see as the billionaire’s quest to assert control over the Texas area. That includes members with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, whose group organized a protest in May against the vote to designate Starbase as a city.
In a previous statement to the USA TODAY Network, Christopher Basaldú, a member of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and native Esto’k Gna Tribe, called the election “a private corporate takeover of pristine natural lands.”
What is Starship? Spacecraft explodes during engine test at Starbase
Eyewitness video released on Thursday (June 19) shows the moment Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship 36 exploded during testing in Brownsville, Texas, United States.
One of the most prominent operations at Starbase is the ongoing development and testing of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket. The launch vehicle, regarded as the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, towers over SpaceX’s famous Falcon 9 rocket – one of the world’s most active – which stands at nearly 230 feet.
The Starship, standing nearly 400 feet tall when fully stacked, is set to serve a pivotal role in future U.S. spaceflight. Starship is the centerpiece of Musk’s vision of sending the first humans to Mars, and is also critical in NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon’s surface.
But the next-generation spacecraft has yet to reach orbit on any of its nine uncrewed flight tests, which began in 2023.
The most recent setback for Starship occurred June 18 when the launch vehicle blew up during an engine test before being mounted to a rocket booster. The mishap, which likely delayed the next launch, occurred after Starship’s first three tests of 2025 all failed to repeat the successes of previous flights.
Can you watch Starship launches from Starbase?
Spectators gather on South Padre Island March 14, 2024 to watch the planned launch of SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft from the company’s Boca Chica launchpad, near Brownsville, Texas.
While Starbase isn’t open to outsiders for launch-viewing, a nearby location has become a famous spot for Texans and space enthusiasts to watch Starship get off the ground.
Isla Blanca Park, 33174 State Park Road 100, is located on the southernmost tip of the resort town South Padre Island on the southern Texas coast. With more than a mile of beaches, the park reliably attracts sizable crowds anytime Starship is due for its latest flight test.
The city of Starbase also recommends the nearby city of Port Isabel to the north as a place to view SpaceX launches.
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: What is Starbase? What to know about launch site for SpaceX Starship
