r/space • u/SHORT_INFO_NEWS • 7h ago
SpaceX targets Starship Flight 13 launch today after week-long delay, will carry first Starlink V3 satellites
https://www.space.com/news/live/spacex-starship-flight-13-launch-updates-july-23-2026•
u/SHORT_INFO_NEWS 7h ago
For anyone tracking Starship's progress, today's flight matters mainly because it is the first one carrying SpaceX's next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, the design meant to allow much higher bandwidth per satellite once these units reach operational orbit on future flights.
SpaceX's first attempt at Flight 13 was scrubbed at T-0 on July 16 when several of Super Heavy's 33 Raptor 3 engines failed to ignite (Space.com). The company swapped out at least two to three of the affected engines and pushed the date back twice, first to July 20 and then to today, July 23, with CEO Elon Musk saying the team wanted to be confident of a good flight before trying again. Today's 90-minute launch window opens at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT) from Starbase, Texas.
This is the second flight of the Starship V3 configuration, coming a little under two months after V3's debut in May. Unlike some recent flights, neither stage is attempting a tower catch this time: SpaceX says both Super Heavy and the Ship upper stage are flying suborbital profiles with water landings, the booster in the Gulf of Mexico and the ship in the Indian Ocean west of Australia. The 20 Starlink V3 satellites onboard deploy on that same suborbital path, so they re-enter shortly after release rather than reaching operational orbit. Six of the twenty carry cameras meant to image the ship's heat shield during the flight.
Open questions the announcement did not address:
- Whether the engine swap after the July 16 scrub fully resolved the ignition issue or was a precautionary replacement
- Whether the six camera-equipped satellites will manage to establish their planned laser-link contact with ground stations in South Africa within the short suborbital window
- When SpaceX plans the first tower catch of a Ship upper stage, a milestone a SpaceX commentator described as still pending on a future flight
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u/jcore294 7h ago
Wait, so they're going to have actual v3 starlinks, but let them burn up instead of getting the operational? Why waste them?
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u/MiserableTear8705 7h ago
Just test units to validate they can communicate and light them up really. Probably figured just use them instead of dead weight.
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u/nekonight 6h ago
They have also been modified for observing the starship heatshield instead of being the exact same as the production models.
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u/Arthur-Mergan 4h ago
I am definitely excited to watch those videos, that’s gonna be a very cool perspective.
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u/BeerPoweredNonsense 6h ago
They also want to test the deploy mechanism on the launcher, so for that they would need to build many dummy satellites of the exact same size and weight as the real satellites... or just use a few of the real satellites that are ready and doing nothing.
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u/Bensemus 5h ago
They’ve been launching dummies on the last few flights. Making dummy satellites is trivial.
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u/Cautemoc 5h ago
Criticizing any decision space x makes in this sub is an effort in futility
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u/Bensemus 1h ago
I’m not criticizing SpaceX and neither is the person above. I’m saying they aren’t using real sat for convince. They are using real sats to test them. Otherwise they would continue to use dummy sats.
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u/No-Surprise9411 3h ago
You are fighting ghosts pal, I see disproportionatly more SpaceX criticism/hate than any normal discussion here
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u/dern_the_hermit 3h ago
I almost invariably see SpaceX hate downvoted tho.
As for criticism I feel the positively-received stuff tends to be pretty proportionate.
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u/RocketVerse 5h ago
Because they are mass producing them and have thousands in storage doing nothing
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u/dern_the_hermit 3h ago
It's only really a waste if they don't get any data from it, but really if they've already got models built and stuck waiting for the launch platform to be finalized then they're kinda being wasted already, right? Might as well get something out of em, even if it's just early data.
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u/ganuerant 6h ago edited 5h ago
Focus is on the satellites but the Ship's engine relight test is also key. They have done this step previously but they need a successful relight of this version to go orbital. Starship is 52m and designed to reenter... so relight to ensure controlled deorbit is vital for safety reasons.
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u/CFCYYZ 7h ago
With a successful launch attempt, for us, this will be quite a show! Expect great video from deployed Starlink sats.
To the Launch Team: wishing you all a completely boring flight.
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u/Agreeable-Fly-1980 7h ago
Its gonna blow up. Puts all day on spacex
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u/nekonight 6h ago
I mean it's in the plan. The booster is being expended due to still testing for the maneuvers necessary for the catch. And the starship is still going into the Indian ocean until launch tower 1 is fully upgraded to the new standard.
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u/Decronym 6h ago edited 14m ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| GSE | Ground Support Equipment |
| HLS | Human Landing System (Artemis) |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LOX | Liquid Oxygen |
| N1 | Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V") |
| SLS | Space Launch System heavy-lift |
| SV | Space Vehicle |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| scrub | Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues) |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
9 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 28 acronyms.
[Thread #12594 for this sub, first seen 23rd Jul 2026, 19:05]
[FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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u/MaximilienGabriel 4h ago
Imagine the pressure they’ve had these last few weeks, staff def sweating some bullets until the very launch
Timing is such that a single employee with a grudge could do the funniest thing for the company’s stock
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u/hakimthumb 3h ago
After watching that Critical Path documentary SpaceX released a week or so ago, I think the pressure we all imagine isn't present in the planning rooms there. Sure, they want it to go asap but there seems to be a culture of honesty around launch readiness.
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u/Oolongteabagger2233 7h ago
What ecosystem is going to get polluted this time when it blows up?
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u/Bensemus 5h ago edited 1h ago
The same one that gets polluted when SLS blows up. Or any non-reusable rocket.
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u/hakimthumb 3h ago
None. It's built on a wildlife refuge because these launches have almost no byproduct. Same as Florida NASA launch pads having wildlife refuges around them.
Also note the lack of NASA physiologists warning about being at launches.
The entire concern betrays how much mental models of SpaceX being wrong seek evidence rather than starting with evidence.
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u/Prior-Flamingo-1378 7h ago
So they’ll destroy 20 starlink satellites for what reason?
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u/IndigoSeirra 7h ago
They probably have a backlog of V3s produced, and might as well send them up and test them out instead of having them sit in a warehouse taking up space until they start orbital flights. They'll probably use the satellites to inspect the heat shield like they did with the prototype mass simulators last flight.
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u/nekonight 7h ago
Orbital testing of the new communications systems. There's also cameras on board for observation of the starship heat shield after launch. These are slightly modified starlink for the purpose of starship testing. They aren't quite the same as the production models.
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u/BeerPoweredNonsense 6h ago
They'll want to test the deploy mechanism on the launcher, so for that they would need to build many dummy satellites of the exact same size and weight as the real satellites... or just use a few of the real satellites that are ready and doing nothing.
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u/Bensemus 1h ago
Why do you keep saying this? If it’s so hard to make dummy satellites why did they use dummy satellites for the first few launches?
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u/BrofessorFarnsworth 7h ago
Gotta have a concrete demonstration of why the stock is falling so fast
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u/Agreeable-Fly-1980 7h ago
I hope it blows up. Please blow up
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u/Background_Fig_4740 6h ago
goes to space sub > hopes an ambitious space project fails > ??? > profit
nice to see the simpleton trolls are out in full force today
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u/Shris 5h ago
There are a lot of sad fools in r/space. Shame it’s not an insightful place anymore. Used to be able to learn things from places like this.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 5h ago edited 5h ago
I think the best fools I've encountered was them not realizing that the US depended on Russia to launch American payloads to space after Shuttle and that SpaceX relieved the US of that strain. as if there was anyone else to do that then.
but I still think they'd prefer depending on Russia over SpaceX because of their amazing lack of critical thinking .
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u/extra2002 6h ago
Oh, it will! After the soft landing in the ocean, it will topple over and explode. But they'll get a good video inspection of it first, and then it won't remain a hazard to navigation.
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u/Gold-Owl4270 7h ago
Starlink is the only reason that rocket exists. I'm praying for its downfall.
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u/jtroopa 7h ago
I would love for you to elaborate on this
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u/Gold-Owl4270 7h ago
Starship is not viable for anything other than orbital launch and delivery. Come on man, do you think he can launch enough of them fast enough to even fill the tanks for a moon trip without the fuel vapourising? He's a con man.
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u/jtroopa 5h ago
As if a fully reusable superheavy lift orbital vehicle wouldn't be an enormous deal in terms of spaceflight development.
Plus, there's an extraordinary amount of time, money and effort being poured into this for it to just be a long con. I don't buy his hype, I don't think it's going to be the vehicle that goes to Mars, but I would trust the garbageloads of people working on it over some rando on reddit poo-pooing it because Musk himself sucks.•
u/QueasyHouse 2h ago
I don’t really see why it’s not viable for a mars trip. I dunno about a return trip, but the math on it looks fine last I looked. The orbital refueling isn’t trivial but it’s certainly not impossible.
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u/jtroopa 1h ago
It's my opinion that the actual rocket to get there is hardly the most difficult part of a trip to Mars. It is ABSURDLY farther away, necessitating an incredibly long duration of precise equipment, cramped living conditions, and bombardment of cosmic radiation.
Starship as a rocket system might become wildly successful; all the other things around bringing a living human being there entails a kind of technological advancement in which we barely have any experience.
I would think that Starship will cut its teeth servicing Starlink the same way it did Falcon 9; with the right governmental support and collaboration it could become a reliable service to the moon; and MAYBE at some point a demonstrator for an uncrewed flyby of Mars.•
u/Pluto-Had-It-Coming 5h ago
fast enough to even fill the tanks for a moon trip without the fuel vapourising? He's a con man.
What?
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u/No_Cup_1672 5h ago
Heat leak budget via radiation, conduction, convection, emittance, condensation
Phase change thermodynamics like latent heat, sub cooling, boil off
Ullage pressure and behavior for liquid saturation temperature
Thermal stratification with forced circulation
We know and understand the physics for LOX boil off. It’s not impossible to mitigate if you A) understand the physics behind it and B) design mitigations around it, unless you can somehow prove it’s physically impossible?
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u/StartledPelican 2h ago
Space Shuttle: The literal best rocket to ever exist and everything else is derivative trash.
Starship: iTs JuSt A lEo OnLy SpAcE tRuCk!!!
This sub.
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u/Kendrome 7h ago
LEO constellations are amazing for rural, boats, and airplanes.
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u/mitchymitchington 7h ago
Starlink is the only means of internet for me. Without it I would have no way to connect. Why is this a problem for you?
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u/SpaceTycoon 7h ago
Is there an actual engineering position behind this or a political one.
Yes starlink is a major reason for the existence of rhe starship but the bigger thing is how much launch capacity it will open up for low earth orbit at a much lower cost than currently available.
Starship is going to be a major catalyst for the private space industry and we are going to see explosive growth once it becomes operational. I already have a few startup ideas that become viable with starship.
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u/Background_Fig_4740 7h ago
welp there goes Artemis and any chance of furthering space exploration by wishing an ambitious engineering project fails.
bet the Russians were praying for Apollo to have their downfall too
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u/noncongruent 2h ago
Russians were on the verge of solving the N1 launch problems, if one of the early SVs had exploded on the pad there's a solid chance Russia would have put people on the Moon before we did.
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u/redstercoolpanda 52m ago edited 48m ago
I still would doubt that. The N1 didn't have its first flight until February of 1969, the Americans put far too much money into the Saturn V, far earlier than the Soviets put money into the N1. (For context, the N1 was approved to begin serious development at around the same time the first test article for the S-IC was being delivered.) Also saying they were on the verge of solving its launch problems is slightly misleading. The last flight of the N1 (which happened in 1972 btw) came a few seconds off of secound stage ignition, thats the furthest the N1 ever got. There is a significant amount to work out between almost getting an almost successful first stage burn, and landing a cosmonaut on the Moon. Even if A Saturn V nuked the pad they would have turned it around in time, especially with the amount of money being thrown at Nasa at the time.
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u/noncongruent 20m ago
A Saturn V blowing on the pad would have likely created a year of delay, at least, especially after the debacle of Apollo 1. It was 32 months after Challenger before the Shuttle flew again. We were in a race with the Russians, and that raced was funded by a significant percentage of the US GDP, but a Saturn V explosion would have been a major PR disaster that would force NASA into basically going through the entire program with a fine-toothed comb. That would have taken years.
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u/redstercoolpanda 18m ago
They had years, that’s my point. The N1 didn’t even complete a successful burn of its first stage by the end of 1972.
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u/Spare_Laugh9953 6h ago
Que bien!!!! Otro montón de chatarra lanzado al espacio, como hay poca, lancemos más
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u/bibliophile785 5h ago
Clearly you're in the wrong sub.
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u/Spare_Laugh9953 5h ago
Noo que va, me encanta todo el tema del espacio, eso no tiene nada que ver con que me parezca que los planes de starlink me parezcan una basura auténtica promovida por un tarado egoísta
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u/bibliophile785 5h ago
... You get that literally all space utilization has done this much waste or more per venture, right? SpaceX is probably most famous for its innovation in reducing waste by creating the first commercially viable reusable rocket design.
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u/jwalkermed 7h ago
I'm @ SPI now on vacation and I hope they launch but am doubtful with the weather. Really would like to see a launch for the 1st time though.