Overview
- SpaceX launched Starship’s 13th integrated flight test from its Starbase site and flew the vehicle on a suborbital trajectory on Friday, completing roughly an hour‑long mission.
- Starship released 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites during flight but the payloads followed the suborbital path and re‑entered the atmosphere, burning up as planned about 20 minutes after deployment.
- The upper‑stage Starship survived atmospheric reentry, made a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, remained afloat, and transmitted heat‑shield imagery and telemetry that engineers called the best data yet.
- The Super Heavy first stage failed to relight enough Raptor engines for a controlled landing, igniting only a subset of the intended restart engines and making a hard splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Engine‑restart faults now shape the program’s next steps by prompting telemetry and regulator review, raising questions for planned booster recovery methods and putting additional pressure on SPCX investors ahead of upcoming corporate reporting.