SpaceX launched its Starship rocket on Friday in the vehicle’s 13th test flight and the company’s first full-scale launch since its record IPO last month. The Super Heavy booster detached about two minutes into the flight but experienced engine relight problems and a hard splashdown; the upper stage came down intact in the Indian Ocean and deployed 20 new Starlink V3 satellites during the mission.
Starship V3 test flight 13: what happened on Friday
The flight took off from SpaceX’s Starbase complex in Texas and marked the second test of the Starship V3 design. SpaceX said the Super Heavy booster detached roughly two minutes into flight and splashed down in the Gulf, but the company acknowledged the landing was “not perfect,” saying the booster “attempted to relight its engines for the landing burn” and only a subset ignited before a “hard splashdown.”
SpaceX described the upper stage as making a “soft splashdown” in the Indian Ocean, “coming to rest intact in the Indian Ocean and providing critical views of an intact heatshield for the first time.” About 18 minutes into the flight the upper stage deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites into orbit; SpaceX said those satellites were intended to burn up after roughly 20 minutes.
How the flight tested Starlink hardware and Starship systems
SpaceX used the mission to fly larger Starlink V3 satellites produced at its Redmond, Washington, facility. A SpaceX business analyst on the company livestream said the new satellites are larger and more powerful than earlier generations and carry solar arrays that generate twice as much power as prior models.
The flight also exercised multiple Starship design objectives: separation of the Super Heavy booster, upper-stage operations and the company’s procedures for deploying larger payloads. SpaceX employees on the livestream referred to the mission as “lucky number 13.” The company has said it plans to use Starship both to expand Starlink and for human missions — including a planned NASA test flight next year.
Why it matters
The flight provides the first in‑flight data points for two elements central to SpaceX’s commercial strategy: Starship’s reusable heavy‑lift architecture and a new generation of Starlink satellites. SpaceX reported an intact heatshield on the upper stage, which is the first time the company said it obtained such imagery. For operators and customers of space‑based communications and compute, the test offered direct evidence about how the hardware behaves during real flight and re‑entry conditions.
For SpaceX’s broader business, successful deployment of larger, higher‑power Starlink units validates incremental steps toward denser, higher‑throughput constellations — an outcome investors and infrastructure planners are watching closely given SpaceX’s stated ambition to expand Starlink using Starship-class launches.
Context and implications for launch cadence and orbital infrastructure
Friday’s mission followed recent scrubs: SpaceX delayed a planned Thursday launch citing weather and had previously scrubbed a July 16 attempt after a booster hold that “shut down the engines right as they were starting to ignite,” a SpaceX employee said on a prior livestream. The company’s stock performance has reflected investor sensitivity to Starship progress; CNBC reported SpaceX’s shares had fallen in four of the past five weeks, down 43% from a June peak.
The partial relight failure on the booster highlights the gap between flying single missions and achieving the rapid, routine reusability SpaceX envisions. TMF Associates’ Tim Farrar said the flight showed progress but that the company “remains a long way from achieving rapid reusability of the entire ship,” and he warned a similar relight failure during a landing at the company’s launch site “could cause severe damage to the launchpad.” Those remarks underscore operational and safety trade-offs as SpaceX attempts to increase cadence and reuse.
What to watch next
Key open questions remain. SpaceX and observers will be looking at detailed telemetry and post‑flight analysis to determine the cause of the booster’s partial relight and the risk that the same failure mode could damage ground infrastructure. SpaceX has a planned NASA test flight next year for Starship; the company will need to demonstrate more reliable relight and landing performance before that mission.
On the satellite side, SpaceX will likely examine the telemetry from the Starlink V3 units and the decision to let those test satellites decay after about 20 minutes. The company is also developing “Starmind” satellites it describes as orbital data centers; how Starship performs as a launch platform for larger, higher‑power payloads will influence deployment plans for those designs and for Starlink operations overall.
Friday’s flight delivered mixed results: the upper stage returned useful heatshield data and the V3 satellites flew as a test payload, while the booster’s relight issues underline remaining engineering and operational challenges before routine, high‑cadence Starship launches become a commercial reality.
Source: CNBC