SpaceX has pushed the launch of Starship Flight 13 to Friday, July 24 after back-to-back scrubs this week, including a Friday morning attempt at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas that ended when four of the vehicle’s 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite in the final seconds of the countdown. The delay marks the second consecutive Starship mission to require multiple launch attempts before clearing the pad, and underscores the engineering pressure on the company’s V3 vehicle as it prepares to deploy the first batch of next-generation Starlink satellites.
Flight 13 is the first orbital-class test of Starship V3 — the latest, most capable iteration of the super-heavy launch system — and was originally scheduled for Thursday, July 16. SpaceX called the first attempt off late in the countdown when ground sensors flagged an issue with one of the booster’s Raptor engines. The Friday morning retry ran into a fresh fault: four Raptors, two on the booster and two on the upper stage, failed to commit to ignition as the clock ran through the final ten seconds.
Two scrubs, two failure modes
The two scrubs were operationally distinct. The Thursday scrub was a hold triggered by the launch director when a Raptor telemetry signature failed a pre-ignition health check; no fuel had begun flowing into the engines when the call came. The Friday scrub, by contrast, was an automatic abort. The four affected Raptors began their ignition sequence but failed a thrust-chamber pressure check within the ignition window, prompting the flight computer to call a hold rather than proceed to a controlled ignition that could have resulted in an engine-out ascent.
The distinction matters because it tells engineers whether the issue is in the engine’s pre-ignition hardware, the ignition transient itself, or the propellant feed system. The Thursday fault looks to be a sensor or controller issue; the Friday fault looks like an ignition-system hardware problem on the affected thrusters. SpaceX will swap the suspect engines and rerun a full countdown rehearsal before Friday’s attempt.
What’s riding on Flight 13
- Starlink V3 deployment. Flight 13 is the first mission to carry operational Starlink V3 satellites — a new generation that delivers roughly 1 terabit per second of bandwidth per spacecraft, ten times the throughput of the current V2 Mini fleet.
- V3 re-entry. The mission will attempt the first controlled re-entry of a Starship V3 upper stage through the atmosphere, validating the new heat shield architecture that is critical to rapid reuse.
- Booster catch. SpaceX will attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster back at the launch site with the mechanical arms of the launch tower — a maneuver that has succeeded on three previous flights and is now treated as operational, not experimental.
“We’re not in a rush. V3 is a different vehicle than V2, and we want to fly it the way we mean to fly it,” SpaceX posted on X following the Friday abort. “Friday is the new target. If we need more time, we’ll take it.”
Why this flight matters more than the previous twelve
Starship V3 is the configuration SpaceX intends to fly operationally for the next four years. The vehicle carries more propellant, has a higher thrust-to-weight ratio, and uses a redesigned heat shield that the company says will survive orbital re-entry without refurbishment. Each successful V3 flight moves SpaceX closer to its stated goal of flying the same booster and ship ten times each in 2027 — a reusability threshold that, if met, would lower the per-kilogram cost to orbit by an order of magnitude relative to Falcon 9.
The Starlink V3 satellites are equally important. With each V3 spacecraft carrying roughly ten times the bandwidth of a V2 Mini, a single Starship V3 deployment could add more usable capacity to the Starlink constellation than an entire Falcon 9 launch of V2 Minis. The economic implications for both SpaceX’s Starlink service revenue and the broader satellite broadband market are significant.
What to watch on Friday
- 09:00 UTC — Launch window opens.
- Ignition — All 33 Raptors must reach full thrust within the one-second commitment window.
- T+9 minutes — Booster separation and tower catch attempt.
- T+65 minutes — Starlink V3 satellite deployment.
- T+90 minutes — V3 upper stage re-entry ignition over the Indian Ocean.
What’s next if Friday scrubs
If the July 24 attempt also scrubs, SpaceX has reserved a backup window for Saturday, July 25 and a third window for Monday, July 27. Beyond that, the company would have to roll the vehicle back to the production site for a more extended review — a scenario that would push the next attempt into early August. NASA has set a soft deadline for Starship’s second crew-rated test flight later this summer, and the company will want to preserve as much schedule margin as possible.
For now, Flight 13 sits at the launch pad, fully fueled, with the suspect engines scheduled to be swapped in the next 48 hours. The vehicle’s first orbital-class Starlink payload and its redesigned heat shield are the prize. The mechanical arms at the launch tower are waiting for the booster to come home.