SpaceX is set to launch an updated version of its Starship megarocket on Tuesday, sending the third-generation vehicle on a critical test flight from Starbase in Texas. The launch window opens at 6:30 p.m. ET, and the flight is expected to run about 65 minutes from liftoff to splashdown.
The vehicle, called V3, will be Starship’s first test flight in its newest configuration and will rise 408 feet when fully stacked. During the suborbital mission, it will try to deploy 22 mock Starlink satellites and relight one of its six Raptor engines in space, two steps SpaceX still needs to prove before the rocket can move deeper into operational use.
The test comes seven months after Starship’s most recent flight, its 11th in total, and more than two years after the spacecraft made its debut in 2023. If everything works as planned, the upper stage will splash down in the Indian Ocean while the booster lands at an offshore site in the Gulf of Mexico, skipping the tower catch SpaceX eventually wants to attempt back at Starbase.
That is the point of this flight. SpaceX has spent the past year trying to recover from a string of setbacks, including an uncontrolled re-entry and two midflight explosions during earlier tests, and the redesign of both the Super Heavy booster and the Ship upper stage is meant to move the program forward after those failures. Tuesday’s mission is the first public check on whether the latest changes have made the rocket more reliable.
The pressure is not just coming from SpaceX’s own test schedule. NASA still sees Starship as central to its Artemis program, even after scrapping its original plan earlier this year to land astronauts on the lunar surface during Artemis III. The agency now hopes the rocket will carry astronauts to the moon in two years, and it wants to test one or both lunar lander vehicles in low-Earth orbit on Artemis III late next year. SpaceX is also racing Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build a lunar lander for NASA to use in 2028.
Beyond the moon race, the company is preparing to go public, with a prospectus expected as early as Wednesday ahead of a possible market debut by mid-June. For now, Tuesday’s Spacex launch is the one that matters: a long, risky run designed to show that the newest Starship can do more than survive launch and survive re-entry. It has to execute the mission, cleanly and in sequence, before anyone can call the redesign a step forward.
