Talk Around Town: SpaceX Aims to Fix What Broke on Flight 12 and Send Starship Up Again Today

What Folks Are Saying Tonight

Well, butter my biscuit and call it a countdown — SpaceX is fixing to fire up the biggest dang rocket on God's green Earth again tonight. The 13th test flight of Starship is, according to Space.com and NextSpaceflight, targeting a 90-minute launch window that opens at 6:45 p.m. EDT from Starbase Pad 2 down in South Texas. Whether that bird actually leaves the ground, and whether it does so gracefully or goes sideways like a possum on a waterslide, ain't known yet at time of writing.

Chatter across specialist outlets paints a picture of a mission that's mostly a repeat of Flight 12 — which itself mostly worked, with some notable 'mostly' caveats that we'll get to. SpaceX says it has made fixes, the FAA has waved the green flag, and 20 brand-spanking-new Starlink V3 satellites are reportedly sitting in the payload bay like nervous piglets heading to the county fair.

What We Actually Know: The Confirmed Facts

Here's what multiple independent outlets agree on, so you can hang your hat on it: Flight 13 is the 13th Starship test since 2023, and per Space.com and NextSpaceflight, it is also the second mission flying the newer Starship V3 configuration, following Flight 12's debut of that setup on May 22, 2026. The FAA, per Wikipedia citing Reuters, closed its mishap investigation into Flight 12 on July 13 — three days before tonight's attempt — giving the legal greenlight for liftoff.

Space.com confirms that during Flight 12, the Super Heavy booster had itself a real bad time on the way back down. After stage separation, the booster rotated a full 90 degrees in the wrong direction — like a cowboy falling off his horse and somehow landing facing backwards — and five engines failed to relight during the boostback burn. The result was an uncontrolled splashdown, which is a polite way of saying it crashed into the Gulf of Mexico instead of sticking the landing.

SpaceX says, per Space.com, that it has introduced a modified engine startup sequence for Ship and hardware updates to Super Heavy to address both the orientation problem and the ignition failures. That's the company's own account of what it fixed, and while no independent engineer has publicly audited those changes, the claim is reported consistently across specialist outlets.

The V3 Satellites: Flying to Burn

Now here's the part that sounds like something your uncle would call a waste of good money: according to Space.com and NextSpaceflight, Flight 13 is hauling 20 Starlink V3 satellites — described by SpaceX as the first fully functional versions of its upgraded internet satellite to ever reach space. These would be the first functional V3 Starlinks ever sent to orbit-adjacent territory, and SpaceX says the mission includes deployment and functionality testing.

But hold on, because Space.com also confirms that every single one of those 20 satellites is expected to burn up in Earth's atmosphere roughly 20 minutes after they are released, owing to Starship's suborbital trajectory. That's right — they go up, they get tested, they come back down as expensive shooting stars. It's a bit like buying a show pig, winning the ribbon, and then cooking it for supper that same afternoon. According to NextSpaceflight and Space.com, six of the 20 have been outfitted with cameras to scan Starship's heat shield and beam imagery back to operators, continuing a practice that was also used on Flight 12.

What Remains Unverified or Uncertain

SpaceX claims it plans to eventually launch somewhere around 100,000 Starlink V3 satellites to increase the capacity and speed of its internet network, per Space.com. That figure comes directly from SpaceX's own statements and has not been independently verified or confirmed by outside analysis — it is the company's own stated ambition, and like all big promises made under floodlights, it deserves a raised eyebrow and a 'well, we'll see.'

More immediately uncertain: the outcome of tonight's launch itself. As of publication, the rocket has not left the pad. The window could produce a clean liftoff, a scrub for weather or technical reasons, or something else entirely. The booster fixes SpaceX says it has implemented may or may not perform as described under real flight conditions. This is, after all, a test — and tests have a funny habit of testing you right back.

Analysis: What This Flight Actually Means

This is analysis, not reporting: Flight 13 sits at an interesting juncture for the Starship program. If SpaceX's described fixes to the booster's orientation and ignition systems hold up under tonight's conditions, it would suggest the company has a reasonable handle on at least some of the gremlins that roughed up Flight 12. A second consecutive booster crash, on the other hand, would raise real questions about the pace of iteration on the Super Heavy return sequence.

The V3 satellite payload, meanwhile, looks less like a science experiment and more like a dress rehearsal for an industrial-scale future — assuming SpaceX's claimed 100,000-satellite ambition is even approximately real. Flying functional but disposable hardware is an expensive way to gather data, and it signals that SpaceX is treating Starship as a working cargo vehicle even while the vehicle is still in test mode. Whether that confidence is earned or premature is something tonight's window will start to answer.