The SpaceX spacecraft and Super Heavy v3 booster will lift off on their 13th test flight from the SpaceX launch facility in Starbase, Texas, USA, on July 24, 2026.
Steve Nesius | Reuters
SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket Friday night from its company home and launch complex in Starbase, Texas, on its 13th test flight and first since the company’s record-breaking IPO last month.
The Super Heavy booster lifted off from the Starship spacecraft about two minutes into its flight and made a controlled splashdown in the Persian Gulf.
In a statement after the flight, SpaceX said the landing was not ideal because the launch vehicle “attempted to re-ignite its engines for landing” but only a portion of the sets successfully ignited before the “hard splashdown.”
The rocket’s upper stage made a “soft splashdown” in the Indian Ocean, SpaceX said, “landing intact in the Indian Ocean and providing the critical view of an intact heat shield for the first time.”
In a live broadcast, employees called the test flight “lucky number 13.”
Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor has designed Starship, the largest rocket ever built or flown, that is fully reusable and can lift more payload into orbit at lower cost. Starship is considered crucial to the company’s goal of significantly expanding its Starlink satellite network, among other missions.
About 18 minutes after Friday’s test flight, SpaceX successfully launched 20 of its new Starlink V3 satellites into orbit, marking the company’s first chance to see how they perform in flight. The satellites were expected to burn out in about 20 minutes.
The new satellites, produced at SpaceX’s Redmond, Washington facility, will be larger and more powerful than previous Starlink satellites. They also feature solar panels that generate twice as much energy as previous generations, a SpaceX business analyst explained on air.
SpaceX is currently developing Starmind satellites, which the company intends to launch and eventually use as orbital data centers.
In addition to using its largest rockets to launch new, larger satellites, SpaceX wants to use the Starship rocket to return American astronauts to the lunar surface and eventually power crewed missions to Mars. The company is preparing Starship for a major NASA test flight next year.
Friday’s test flight was the second for Starship V3, the latest version of the rocket.
Tim Farrar of TMF Associates, a satellite services industry expert, said the test flight showed that SpaceX has made some progress in developing Starship, but is “still a long way from achieving rapid reuse of the entire vehicle.” He pointed to problems SpaceX encountered Friday restarting its Raptor engines. “Any such failure during a landing attempt at the company’s launch site could result in severe damage to the launch pad,” he said.
In a post on SpaceX’s X, the company said it had postponed an earlier test flight scheduled for Thursday “due to weather.” The company also previously canceled a July 16 test flight after the rocket’s booster caused a shutdown that “turned off the engines just as they were starting to ignite,” a SpaceX employee said during a livestream of a previous event.
SpaceX shares have fallen in four of the last five weeks, down 43% from their peak close on June 16.
LOOK: SpaceX falls below IPO prices
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