Starship Flight 13: a near-perfect ship, a troubled booster
· TexaHub · Space & Aerospace
SpaceX's second V3 Starship deployed 20 working Starlink V3 satellites and splashed down intact, while booster relight problems and a GAO warning frame what comes next.
A third attempt that flew
SpaceX flew the 13th test flight of its Super Heavy-Starship system from Starbase, Texas, on Friday 24 July [2][3]. It was only the second flight of the company's third-generation, or V3, design, following a first V3 flight in May [1][3]. That May flight, Flight 12, did not go to plan: the engine startup sequence left the booster's directional flip off by approximately 90 degrees, preventing a successful boostback burn and resulting in the loss of Booster 19 [5].
Flight 13 itself took more than one attempt. On 16 July an ignition sequence ended in an automatic abort after on-screen telemetry showed four booster engines failing to ignite, with Elon Musk writing that "some of the engines didn't start" [5]. Ahead of the next try, Spaceflight Now reported Musk's statement that at least two Raptor engines needed to be removed after the hard engine stop, and that the booster carried hardware modifications to improve relight reliability along with updated engine alarms and aborts [6]. Universe Today later put the number of replaced booster engines at six [4]; the published accounts differ on that figure.
The flight plan was suborbital: deploy 20 Starlink V3 satellites, relight a Raptor engine during the coast phase and bring the booster down in a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico [5]. At liftoff all 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines on the first stage ignited normally, producing some 16 million pounds of thrust [1].
The ship: the cleanest flight yet
The upper stage, Ship 40 in SpaceX's numbering, completed its climb to space with all six of its Raptor engines operating smoothly [1][6]. During the coast it released 20 third-generation Starlink satellites sequentially from a payload dispenser, six of which carried cameras to inspect the ship's heat shield tiles [1]. The satellites shared the ship's suborbital trajectory and were expected to burn up on reentry approximately 20 minutes after deployment [5].
SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said on the webcast: "Not only were we able to make contact with all 20, but we also made comms over lasers with all of them as well" [4]. SpaceX says the V3 satellites can download data at speeds of up to 1 terabit per second [4]. The ship also performed an in-space Raptor relight before reentry [3].
The vehicle splashed down in the Indian Ocean 1 hour 5 minutes after launch [2], northwest of Australia, and remained intact with its cameras still operating [1]. SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called it "the softest splashdown we have ever had with Starship in the Indian Ocean," and Musk posted that "Starship is intact, floating in the ocean and transmitting telemetry!" [3].
For an operational constellation, the significance is that the satellites were production units that linked up with the network [4][5], so the flight exercised the deployment hardware and satellite checkout, not only the rocket. It remains a suborbital demonstration: the satellites were never meant to stay in orbit, and Starship has not yet reached orbit [3].
The booster: relight is still the weak point
The Super Heavy booster performed as planned on ascent and in the initial descent, but only 10 of its 13 engines restarted for the landing burn and only five appeared to be running at the moment of splashdown, so it hit the Gulf of Mexico faster than expected [1][2]. "It didn't look like we lit all 13 engines that we were planning for that initial landing burn," Huot said [3].
This is the same family of problem that troubled the July 16 abort and the May flight: getting many Raptor 3 engines to start, and restart, reliably. The booster changes made before this flight were aimed squarely at relight reliability [6], and the result suggests that work is not finished. Because SpaceX's plans depend on recovering and reflying boosters, this is not a minor issue, though the company has not published a root cause.
The Artemis clock
The flight came one day after the Government Accountability Office published its annual assessment of NASA's major projects on 23 July [7]. Under NASA's revised plan, the human landing system is to support Artemis IV, planned for early 2028, and Artemis V in late 2028 [7]. GAO wrote that "as of May 2026, SpaceX has not yet demonstrated a critical technology it is developing to store and transfer propellant while in orbit," and that the project's propellant-transfer and uncrewed demonstration missions "were already delayed by over a year" [7]. As reported by CBS News and Spaceflight Now, GAO called SpaceX's progress on cryogenic fuel management "a top risk" [1][2].
Space.com laid out the remaining list: over the next two years SpaceX must reach orbit, catch a returning ship with the launch tower, demonstrate in-space refueling, build a tanker version and finish a crewed lander with life support, all for an Artemis IV landing NASA has targeted for 2028 [3].
What to watch
In our reading, Flight 13 retired some upper-stage risk, notably reentry and controlled splashdown with an intact ship, and showed that Starship can act as a satellite deployer. None of that addresses the propellant-transfer capability that GAO flags as the central schedule risk, and that capability can only be shown in orbit, with at least two vehicles. The next useful signals are whether SpaceX attempts an orbital flight and a ship catch, and whether it explains the booster relight shortfall before the next launch. Until then, the 2028 lunar landing dates should be read as targets that depend on milestones still ahead.
Sources
[1] Super Heavy-Starship rocket chalks up mostly successful test flight — Spaceflight Now, 25 Jul 2026
[2] SpaceX's giant Super Heavy-Starship rocket blasts off on key test flight — CBS News, 24 Jul 2026
[3] SpaceX's Starship megarocket makes the 'softest splashdown' ever after launching next-gen Starlink satellites in Flight 13 test (video) — Space.com, 25 Jul 2026
[4] Lucky 13! Starship deploys Starlink satellites and splashes down intact — Universe Today via Phys.org, 27 Jul 2026
[5] Post-ignition anomaly causes abort of SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 — Spaceflight Now, 16 Jul 2026
[6] Launch preview: SpaceX ready for 2nd attempt to launch Starship Flight 13 following post-abort engine work — Spaceflight Now, 23 Jul 2026
[7] NASA: Assessments of Major Projects (GAO-26-108556) — U.S. Government Accountability Office, 23 Jul 2026