SpaceX announced it made several hardware and software modifications to its massive Starship rocket as it prepares for what could be the vehicle’s most critical test flight yet.
The launch provider said over the weekend it is targeting a 90-minute launch window that opens at 6:45 p.m. EDT on Thursday for Starship Flight 13, which is a precursor to more ambitious missions the company has planned for 2026. SpaceX said the mission will have “similar objectives” to Flight 12 in May, which was the first test of Starship’s larger, more powerful Version 3 (V3) configuration.
SpaceX has flown Starship variants since 2023, but the V3 is its first designed to be capable of commercial, orbital deployments of Starlink satellites. It is also the vehicle around which the company’s human landing system (HLS)—a candidate to deliver astronauts to the moon on future NASA lunar missions—is based. The first of those missions is scheduled for early 2028, putting pressure on SpaceX to deliver a viable spacecraft.
The company validated some of the V3 upgrades on Flight 12. But the rocket’s Super Heavy booster failed to complete its flip and boostback burn as intended, causing it to land hard in the Gulf of Mexico and prompting the FAA to ground it.
The FAA closed the SpaceX-led Flight 12 mishap investigation on Monday, clearing the way for Starship to return to action—and to form. The rocket completed five suborbital test flights in 2025, with the final two in August and October being the most successful. But the seven-month gap between Flights 11 and 12 was the longest drought since Starship debuted in 2023.
With the V3 Starship, SpaceX in 2026 aims to complete its first mission to low-Earth orbit (LEO), achieve full reusability, and demonstrate docking and propellant transfer on orbit. The key to hitting those milestones will be returning to regular flight cadence. SpaceX has bet that stressing Starship to its limits—as it did on Flight 12 and other missions—will eliminate future hiccups, with the tradeoff being more frequent groundings.
If SpaceX can launch Flight 13 this week, the less than two-month turnaround from the prior mission would be a significant improvement. At the same time, delays are stacking up.
What Went Wrong?
Starship Flight 12 was a mixed bag.
On one hand, the rocket successfully reached orbit, deployed 20 “dummy” Starlink satellites, and splashed down within a predetermined zone in the Indian Ocean.
On the other, the ship lost one of its six Raptor engines, and the Super Heavy booster did not behave as predicted. Due to the booster anomaly, the FAA activated a debris response area (DRA) that placed five aircraft in holding patterns and delayed six departures.
The mission was critical as the debut of Starship V3, which is expected to be capable of larger Starlink deployments than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rockets. Compared to the V2 spacecraft, it has lower mass but more thrust—enough to carry 100 metric tons of payload to LEO, according to CEO Elon Musk.
Further enhancements to the ship will enable orbital docking and propellant transfer, which in the future could open up commercial or NASA lunar missions. For those trips, Starship would need to fuel up at an orbital propellant depot due to its massive size and the power required to get it to the moon. That is the Starship HLS’ planned profile for NASA’s Artemis IV lunar landing scheduled for 2028, should the space agency select it over Blue Origin’s Blue Moon HLS.
The FAA said Monday that it accepted SpaceX’s assessment of the booster anomaly’s two most probable root causes—“heat effects on propulsion system components during the ascent and erroneous engine alarm system settings.” It said there were no reports of injury or property damage and approved four corrective actions.
“SpaceX can proceed with Starship Flight 13 launch operations provided all safety and other licensing requirements are met,” the agency said in a statement.
SpaceX over the weekend provided further clarity.
It said that during Flight 12 stage separation, “slight differences in engine startup” caused a 90-degree deviation to Super Heavy’s planned flip maneuver, which is intended to save fuel during the booster’s descent. The vehicle’s engine startup sequence has been modified, SpaceX said, to more reliably flip in the right direction.
After the flip, five of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines failed to relight. That brought a premature end to its boostback burn and led to a harder-than-expected splashdown. SpaceX said that the Super Heavy for Flight 13 received hardware modifications that are intended to prevent a repeat, as well as upgrades to its engine alarm and abort systems.
The company also addressed the loss of one of Starship’s three vacuum-optimized Raptor engines, which it said occurred about 40 seconds after stage separation. Still, the Flight 12 Starship successfully completed a flip, burn, and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
What’s Next?
With Flight 13, SpaceX will look to recreate the successful aspects of Flight 12 without incurring anomalies.
Super Heavy’s core objective is the same—a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and landing burn ahead of a soft splashdown.
For Starship, SpaceX aims to relight one of the vehicle’s Raptor engines in space, which it failed to do on Flight 12 due to the engine loss. If the ship makes it to atmospheric reentry, the company plans to push its heat shield to the limit, as it has done before.
Previous missions have experimented with different angles of attack and tile materials. For a few, SpaceX stripped heat shield tiles in certain locations to expose Starship’s underbelly to maximum stress. This time, it will attach tiles to various portions of the ship to evaluate different options for the integration of catch hardware.
Unlike the company’s Falcon 9, which is fitted with legs, Starship and Super Heavy are designed to be snared out of the air by a pair of giant metal chopsticks at the Starbase launch pad in Texas. SpaceX does not plan to catch either stage on Flight 13, but it has successfully caught and reflown two boosters.
Another change to Flight 13 is Starship’s payload. This time, the Starlink satellites will be real rather than dummy versions. The satellites, which are expected to burn up about 20 minutes after being deployed, will try to connect with SpaceX’s larger Starlink constellation using solar arrays and antennas.
Six of the satellites are equipped with cameras that are designed to scan Starship’s heat shield and beam imagery from orbit to mission control in Texas. Some heat shield tiles were painted white to simulate missing hardware and test the system’s accuracy. The idea is to assess the heat shield’s health before committing resources to a catch attempt. Two of the 20 dummy Starlinks deployed on Flight 12 had the same modifications and successfully collected imagery.
SpaceX will stream the mission live on its website and X account, starting about 30 minutes before liftoff. Watching closely will be thousands of space enthusiasts, as well as NASA and the company’s commercial customers who are depending on Starship.
More anomalies could impact SpaceX’s future ambitions, including landing American astronauts on the moon. NASA in June awarded a lunar cargo mission to its main rival, Blue Origin, which is vying to be the HLS provider for the Artemis IV moon landing.
