What we're covering here
• SpaceX’s Starship megarocket lifted off from Starbase, Texas, following an aborted launch attempt last week in which several engines failed to ignite at liftoff.
• The one-hour test flight, called Flight 13, aims to conclude with a controlled splashdown of the upper Starship spacecraft in the Indian Ocean. The Super Heavy rocket booster, which detached from Starship two minutes into the flight, made a controlled splashdown in the Gulf.
• Flight 13 marks the second test for this version of Starship, called V3. During the first flight of a Starship V3 rocket in May, a series of engine outages caused the rocket to underperform.
• SpaceX is facing intense pressure to get Starship ready for a crucial NASA test flight next year that could pave the way for the next moon landing.
• This flight is also the first for SpaceX as a publicly traded company. Last week’s aborted launch attempt sparked a selloff, and shares are still trading below their IPO price.
See how Starship stacks up to the largest rockets ever
Starship is the biggest rocket ever created — by far.
The towering megarocket stands at nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall and, with the debut of Version 3, packs around 18 million pounds of force at liftoff.
Here’s how it stacks up to some of the largest rockets ever constructed, past and present.
- Saturn V: The famous NASA rocket that powered the Apollo moon landings of the 20th century put out about 7.6 million pounds of thrust at takeoff. That’s still less than half of Starship’s expected power. It stood at about 360 feet (110 meters) tall.
- Russian N1 rocket: This was Russia’s megamoon rocket of the 20th century space race. And while it was never operational (all four launch attempts failed), Musk has said it’s the closest relative of Starship’s design. The N1 was expected to give off more than 10 million pounds of thrust at liftoff — still well below Starship’s specs.
- The Space Shuttle: NASA’s workhorse launch system in the post-Apollo era, the shuttle had two solid rocket boosters that gave off about 5.3 million pounds of force at liftoff. It was about 180 feet (55 meters) tall.
- Falcon Heavy: SpaceX’s own 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) rocket that previously held the title for most powerful operational rocket in the world. It has about 5 million pounds of thrust.
- Space Launch System: NASA’s new moon rocket, which powered the historic Artemis II lunar flyby mission in April, is currently the most powerful rocket in operation. It produces about 8.8 million pounds of thrust — less than half the Starship V3’s expected output at liftoff. SLS’s Block 1 variant is about 322 feet (98.15 meters) tall.
Starship begins deploying Starlink test satellites
The first Starlink V3 satellite have officially reached space — though they’ll only be in space about 20 minutes.
SpaceX plans to test deploying the solar arrays, and six of the 20 satellites are outfitted with cameras that will snap some pictures of Starship to help engineers collect data.
Though these Starlink V3 satellites won’t be operational, eventually SpaceX aims to use Starship to deploy these by the batch-load. The newer version is supposed to give SpaceX’s existing network a major capacity upgrade.
Starship will attempt to deploy actual Starlink satellites for the first time
SpaceX says the Starship flying today’s mission has 20 Starlink satellites on board, the first of the latest version of the internet-beaming satellites that will reach space.
But they won’t stay in orbit: The satellites — like Starship itself — will be on a suborbital trajectory, which means they’re expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere upon reentry.
Each of the satellites will be folded flat and ejected from a narrow slit in Starship’s side, which acts as a sort of high-tech Pez dispenser.
SpaceX has attempted to test this deployment with dummy satellites on each of the last six test flights. But today’s mission will have actual Starlink V3 satellites that will deploy solar panels and antennas. They’ll briefly attempt to connect to the company’s existing Starlink network using lasers.
And before their demise, about 20 minutes after deployment, the Starlink satellites will aim to collect some data about Starship: “Six of the satellites have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators.”
Super Heavy booster makes controlled splashdown
In a big victory, the Super Heavy booster made a clean, controlled splashdown, though SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot noted on the livestream that it appears all 13 of the vehicles engines did not light on the landing burn.
During the last test flight in May, Super Heavy had spun out of control as it experienced issues getting its engines relit after a wild separation from the upper Starship craft.
Cheers rang out among employees watching the launch as Super Heavy made its touchdown today.
One caveat, SpaceX’s Dan Huot said the landing velocity was a “little bit high” — but he’s still marking it as a big step forward.
Super Heavy makes it through boostback burn
The Super Heavy booster is so far performing much better than last time. Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesperson, said the booster got all 33 engines lit at takeoff and used 13 engines for the boostback burn. It’s aiming for a controlled splashdown in the ocean.
Starship, meanwhile, is cruising — showing all six engines lit successfully.
This is already a stronger performance than Flight 12 in May.
Starship separates from Super Heavy via “hot staging”
The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster just made it through a crucial moment in the mission: stage separation.
That’s when Super Heavy shuts down most of its engines in a moment called “main engine cutoff,” or MECO, as the rocket booster has now burned through most of its fuel.
Starship then ignited its own engines and thrust itself away from the Super Heavy booster in a maneuver SpaceX calls “hot staging.”
This maneuver was carefully tweaked for today’s flight. During the last test run in May, the upper Starship vehicle — or “ship” — did not fire all six of its engines at the same time, causing the Super Heavy booster below to flip in the wrong direction.
Starship survives its toughest "Max Q" yet
The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster just soared through the first crucial milestone: Max Q.
That’s an aerospace term that refers to the point during flight at which a vehicle experiences peak stress — when it is traveling very fast while the atmosphere is still quite thick, putting the highest strain on the spacecraft.
Remember: On this mission, Max Q was expected to be the most intense yet. SpaceX said it would attempt a “higher dynamic pressure on ascent than previous flights” in the hopes that Starship can survive the stresses. This tougher flight path allows Starship to save fuel, increasing the total mass it can carry to orbit.
LIFTOFF!
The Super Heavy rocket booster’s 33 Raptor engines powered on, drumming up to 18 million pounds of thrust.
The vehicle is so powerful it defies simple comparisons.
Justin Styer, SpaceX’s senior director of Starship launch, used this analogy in a recent promotional video.
This is what SpaceX plans to use a 110 million square foot factory for
Since beginning its foray as a publicly traded company, SpaceX has been propping up a wild plan to deploy about a million satellites into low-Earth orbit for a space-based data center — mostly to support AI.
But not all the infrastructure would be in space. The company also has plans to build a truly colossal factory in Texas, called Terafab, that’s expected to cost tens of billions of dollars.
The facility — slated to be 110,000,000 square feet — will be where Tesla, SpaceX and XAI, which SpaceX acquired ahead of the IPO, manufacture chips for AI computing.
Government oversight officials are worried about Starship. Here's why
NASA watchdogs have raised concerns about Starship’s complexity and the daunting technical risks associated with using the vehicle for a moon landing “given its intricate operational design, complex concept of operations, and challenges during their ongoing flight test program,” according to a recently published report by NASA’s independent safety advisory group, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.
Another report from NASA’s Inspector General notes that “gaps exist” in the “testing posture and crew survival analyses” of Starship.
“If the landers encounter a catastrophic event, NASA knows it would not have the capability to rescue stranded astronauts from space or the lunar surface,” the report noted.
SpaceX has not directly responded to the reports.
But in an October 2025 statement, the company said this:
“To return Americans to the Moon, SpaceX aligned Starship development along two paths: development of the core Starship system and supporting infrastructure,” noting SpaceX has been “self-funding over 90% of system costs.”
Creating the lunar lander NASA is requesting, SpaceX said, “leverages and modifies the core vehicle capability.”
SpaceX was making the case that it’s not unfocused on NASA’s mission. It’s just trying to figure out how to get the overall Starship system to work — and then it can figure out how to tailor Starship to fitting NASA’s needs.
SpaceX is working under contracts worth up to about $4 billion with NASA, and the company has highlighted that the deal is “fixed-price,” meaning SpaceX doesn’t get more money if it lags behind or development doesn’t go as intended.
SpaceX's last launch attempt found issues with six engines
SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot confirmed what on-screen data appeared to show about Starship’s most recent launch attempt last week: Four engines failed to ignite at liftoff. The dramatic ordeal saw the other engines briefly fire before being automatically shut off by computers to prevent a potentially unsafe takeoff.
But after digging into the problem, Huot said, SpaceX found an “off nominal spin response in the aux turbo pumps on six of the engines.” That basically means that six of the Raptor engines had start-up problems, and Huot said engineers were able to link the issue to moisture collecting inside the pumps from “previous operations.”
At least, Huot said, that’s the most likely explanation.
SpaceX then replaced all six engines experiencing issues, Huot said, and conducted a flameless engine test to make sure the problem was fixed ahead of today’s liftoff attempt.
This is what SpaceX has changed since the last test flight
In case you missed it, the first test flight of Starship V3 in May was a mixed bag of successes and disappointments.
The vehicle had a clean liftoff. But during stage separation — the moment that the Super Heavy breaks away from the upper Starship spacecraft, also called the “ship” — problems arose.
At that point, “slight differences in engine startup on the ship caused the directional flip of the booster to be off by approximately 90 degrees,” according to SpaceX.
Ultimately, the Super Heavy booster crashed-landed in an unintended spot when five engines failed to relight.
The ship performed slightly better — ultimately reaching its splashdown location and keeping upright — but it was forced to operate with only five of its six engines.
To address that issue, SpaceX said it has adjusted some hardware on Super Heavy’s engines in the hopes of making them relight more reliably. The ship’s startup sequence has also been changed in order to ensure the booster can “more reliably flip in the desired direction.”
Starship’s engines also have some upgrades “with additional reliability improvements planned in upcoming versions of the Raptor engine,” according to the company.
Employees cheered the victories. In the launch control room during Flight 12, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk chatted with mission controllers, musing “this is the hardest thing humans have ever done,” according to footage released by SpaceX.
Justin Styer, SpaceX’s senior director of Starship launch, replied:
These are the key moments to watch for during today's flight
As you follow along during today’s mission, here are some key moments to keep an eye out for:
- T-30 seconds: The flight director gives a final “go” for launch.
- T-3 seconds: The Super Heavy rocket booster’s 33 Raptor engines will get the command fire on to vault the 400-foot-tall rocket system off the launchpad.
- Liftoff
- T+58 seconds: The rocket will experience “Max Q” — or the moment of maximum stress on the vehicle as it gains speed while still trudging through Earth’s thick atmosphere. This will be the most intense Max Q to date and will come about 13 seconds later into flight than the last mission.
- T+2:18: Super Heavy will shut down most of its 33 Raptor engines. Moments later, the rocket booster will break away from the upper Starship spacecraft, or ship, which will then fire its own six engines and continue on the mission.
- T+2:25: Super Heavy will relight its engines for a half-minute burn, attempting to control and steer itself as it falls back to Earth.
- T+6:27: Super Heavy fires its engines again for a landing burn. Though it won’t attempt to land back at the launch tower, it will do some maneuvering in an attempt to make a controlled touchdown in the Gulf.
- T+8:05: The ship will cease firing its six engines and begin coasting.
- T+16:40: Starship will begin deploying its Starlink V3 satellites. This step will take about 15 minutes.
- T+38:58: Another tech demo will commence as Starship relights one of its engines.
- T+47:30: One of the most high-stakes portions of the flight begins as Starship begins to reenter Earth’s thick atmosphere. Earlier iterations of the vehicle occasionally lost control or suffered damage during this stretch of the mission.
- T+1:05:01: Starship relights its engines again and rapidly executes a flip maneuver to reorient the spacecraft upright for a simulated landing, which will take place over the ocean.
SpaceX begins filling Starship with fuel as livestream kicks off
In a post on X, SpaceX confirmed that the Super Heavy rocket booster and Starship spacecraft are now being filled up. Millions of pounds of propellant — including superchilled liquid methane (the fuel) and liquid oxygen, or LOX (the oxidizer).
While SpaceX abandoned plans to launch Starship on Thursday evening, citing weather conditions, the company said earlier that tonight’s forecast is “ideal.”
SpaceX is battling a lawsuit alleging Starship flights cause property damage
Some residents near SpaceX’s Starbase launch facilities at Texas’ southernmost tip have long expressed worries about disruptive sonic booms — which can be as loud as gunshots and may cause minor damage to buildings.
Now, more than 70 Texas locals are taking those concerns to court.
In an April 30 lawsuit, the residents said their homes had sustained unspecified damages from the acoutstic vibrations associated with Starship launches.
SpaceX recently argued back in court, as Law360 earlier reported, saying that any property damage — if it’s proven — was not done intentionally: “Any suggestion that SpaceX launched its rockets with some sort of ill-will, animus, or specific desire to harm Plaintiffs personally is both completely absent from the Complaint and facially absurd,” SpaceX said in a July court filing. “This Court should dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims for property-based noneconomic damages as unrecoverable under Texas law.”
It is possible for the sonic booms created by Starship rockets to break windows — particularly old, damaged or single-pane ones, according to earlier research conducted by Brigham Young University students and staff.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit.
But Musk has previously downplayed sonic booms, saying in a 2022 post on X, “Starbase is an area that experiences storms and hurricanes that are far more serious than Starship launches.”
SpaceX is still facing pushback from environmentalists
Last year, following an explosive mishap during Starship testing, SpaceX insisted that it had found “no evidence of any floating or deceased marine life that would signal (rocket) booster debris impact harmed animals in the vicinity” of the crash site in the waters off the Gulf Coast.
The company has also separately said that Starship launches present “no hazards to the surrounding communities in the Rio Grande Valley.”
Not everyone is convinced. Some residents and environmentalists have bemoaned frequent beach closures triggered by Starship testing and the noise and debris associated with Starship’s failures.
In addition to sonic booms, which can register as small earthquakes, activists are concerned about migratory birds that have long relied on the area, including the snowy plover, a species that has rapidly declined, according to environmentalists.
And an NGO in Mexico says it has documented melted plastics, aluminum and pieces of blue adhesive strewn across the sands of Tamaulipas’ Bagdad beach, spurring concerns about threats to wildlife such as Kemp’s ridley turtles, an endangered species.
That same group, called Conibio Global, has staged several protests of Starship launches using boats positioned in Gulf waters near SpaceX’s launch site that have included tense standoffs. The group is carrying out another demonstration tonight, Conibio confirmed to CNN.
It was also a US environmental group, SaveRGV, that sued over access to local beaches that have been frequently cut off from the public due to launches and rocket testing. The Texas Supreme Court, however, recently handed SpaceX a big win on that front.
This "hazard area" is meant to keep boat traffic safe
The US Coast Guard is tasked with keeping the waterways under Starship’s flight path safe — and for the first moments of launch that means keeping a narrow swath of the Gulf and Caribbean clear of boats and other vessels.
The Federal Aviation Administration separately warns aircraft to steer clear. And if Starship malfunctions, the FAA is also tasked with locking down pre-designated “Debris Response Areas.”
The hazard zones are different this year: Previous Starship test flights have flown a slightly different path, passing just north of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
That route, however, has taken Starship over populated Caribbean islands, a precarious situation as evidenced in 2025 by Flight 7, during which the spacecraft exploded above Turks and Caicos. (A vehicle on the ground was damaged but there were no reported injuries.)
After such mishaps, emergency closures have also forced commercial flights to divert course — all in the name of ensuring aircraft don’t get struck by parts of an exploded Starship vehicle.
SpaceX is racing to meet a key NASA deadline
In order to reach the moon’s surface, NASA astronauts — riding aboard the space agency’s own Orion spacecraft — will have to dock with a lunar lander while in orbit around the moon.
And Starship might be the lander that NASA opts to use. But that’s not a done deal just yet.
SpaceX is racing against Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin, which is developing a lunar lander that looks much more similar to the Apollo landers.
(Starship is definitely an odd pick for a lander. Theoretically, Starship is powerful enough on its own to carry out the entire mission by itself. But Starship was NASA’s first pick — landing a $3 billion contract in 2021. Blue Origin later inked a similar deal.)
NASA is still working to hash out exactly how the next moon landing will work as the agency races to beat China’s 2030 deadline to get its taikonauts on the moon.
That’s where Artemis III comes in: It’s a test mission, slated for as soon as next year, that would test out how Orion will dock with a lander — but in low-Earth orbit rather than around the moon.
Currently, NASA envisions that Orion will practice docking with both SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon on the flight.
NASA chief Jared Isaacman has said he’s “confident” both will be ready — but a much remains to be seen — including how fast SpaceX can start seeing signficant progress in this Starship test flight campaign.
"It would be a disaster": Skeptical Floridians brace for Starship's arrival
While Starbase, Texas — the name for SpaceX’s sprawling facilities and its recently incorporated company town — has been Starship’s home base for years, serving as the main stage for each test flight thus far, SpaceX has plans to move some missions to Florida.
The company already launches its workhorse Falcon rockets from there.
But Starship is a different beast: It’s far larger, louder and more powerful.
A public comment period about SpaceX’s plans to launch the megarocket from Florida sparked outrage from some locals.
“It would be a disaster,” one resident said during a public hearing about the matter in September. “And the whole beach and everything would be closed. The turtles would be gone. So I presume from all this that the focus is on the money, the economics, and not on anything else.”
Roughly 25 people spoke during a two-hour virtual hearing about the plan last September. About 20 of those people expressed concerns or outright opposition.
But SpaceX has plowed ahead, constructing a launchpad and other infrastructure to host Starships. During a webcast of last week’s aborted launch attempt, Nathan Commissariat, a civil engineer at SpaceX, said the company intends to launch its first Starship from Florida as soon as this year.
Starship will experience its most intense "Max Q" to date
During any given rocket launch, one moment stands out as the most physically jarring: Max Q.
That’s an aerospace term that refers to the moment when a rocket experiences peak aerodynamic pressure. It happens when the vehicle is gaining speed while the atmosphere is still quite thick, creating a hurricane of stresses.
On this test flight, Max Q will be particularly jarring.
SpaceX says it’s intentionally altering Starship’s path, putting stronger aerodynamic loads on the vehicle.
This higher-stress trajectory is intended to make Starship more efficient, giving it “increased payload to orbit capability” — or the ability to haul more mass to space — SpaceX said on its website.
That’s the thing with rockets: They seem big and powerful until you realize that they’re mostly full of the fuel. They have to spend most of that fuel just getting off the planet. And SpaceX wants to find new ways to help its rockets reach space with more fuel left over.
So, SpaceX’s goal today is to see whether Starship can fly a more difficult flight path in the name of saving fuel.
But SpaceX also wants to make sure this more violent upward trajectory doesn’t harm the heat shield that will protect Starship on the way back down. The company made that clear when it scrapped an attempt to launch test flight again on Thursday:
