Overview
- The FAA, which closed its review Monday, accepted SpaceX’s corrective actions for the May Super Heavy booster failure and formally cleared the company to resume integrated Starship flight tests.
- SpaceX is targeting no earlier than Thursday, July 16, for Flight 13 from its Starbase facility in South Texas and will stream the launch live about 30 minutes before liftoff.
- Investigators traced the Flight 12 booster loss to heat damage on propulsion components and erroneous engine alarm settings that, combined with a change in the upper‑stage ignition sequence, rotated the booster about 90 degrees and left five booster engines unable to relight.
- Flight 13 will test the fixes by repeating the suborbital profile while carrying 20 functional Starlink V3 test satellites that are expected to remain suborbital and burn up about 20 minutes after deployment; six satellites are fitted with cameras to image Starship’s heat shield.
- The mission will also attempt an in‑space relight of a Raptor engine, exercise improved boostback and relight hardware and software on the booster, and provide data that advances SpaceX’s iterative effort toward a fully reusable heavy‑lift vehicle for Starlink growth and NASA lunar missions.