Home / SpaceX aborts Starship Flight 13 launch attempt
SpaceX’s Starship suffered an abort at T-0 July 16 when some of its Raptor engines failed to ignite. Credit: SpaceX webcast
WASHINGTON — SpaceX aborted the launch of its latest Starship test flight July 16 when some of the vehicle’s engines failed to ignite.
Starship was scheduled to lift off on the Flight 13 mission from the company’s Starbase, Texas, test site at 6:45 p.m. Eastern. However, the launch was aborted just as Raptor engines in the Super Heavy booster ignited. SpaceX said moments later that it was calling off the launch attempt for the day.
“Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk posted on social media about 10 minutes after the abort. “Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days.”
“To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed & replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week,” he posted later.
Flight 13 is the second flight of Starship V3, the upgraded version of the vehicle that SpaceX intends to use for future orbital missions. This flight, like Flight 12 on May 22, will be a suborbital test flight.
Flight 13 will fly a similar suborbital profile as Flight 12, incorporating changes in response to issues seen on Flight 12. That included the failure of the Super Heavy booster to perform a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and the loss of one of six engines in the Starship upper stage during its ascent.
One notable change for Flight 13 is Starship’s payload. While some previous flights carried mass simulators of next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, this mission is carrying 20 functioning Starlink V3 satellites that will be deployed once Starship is in space.
The satellites, placed on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship, will be put through about 20 minutes of tests before reentry. That includes deployment of solar arrays and antennas and communications tests with both ground stations and other Starlink satellites.
“Before we operationalize these satellites, we want to put them in a flight-like environment,” SpaceX’s Tyler Lionquist said on the launch webcast. The brief flight will allow engineers to “speed run” those deployment and communications tests. “This is all part of SpaceX’s iterative process to technology advancement.”
The Starlink V3 satellites are larger and more powerful than those currently in the constellation and are optimized to launch on Starship. Each satellite will provide 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity, 10 times better than existing Starlink satellites, and 160 gigabits per second of uplink capacity, 22 times better.
The satellites also have upgraded phased-array antennas as well as backhaul antennas that operate on Ka-, E-, V- and W-bands, improving capacity by a factor of eight. The satellites’ solar arrays generate twice the power of those for existing V2 satellites.
The Flight 13 abort was the first Starship launch attempt since SpaceX went public June 12 and illustrated the skittishness of some investors. Shares in the company were at about $132 in after-hours trading when the abort took place. Within five minutes, the shares plummeted to nearly $125 per share before rebounding slightly to $127.
Earlier in the day, shares closed at $131.11, below the initial public offering price of $135 for the first time.
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Jeff Foust
Jeff Foust writes about space policy, commercial space, and related topics for SpaceNews.
He earned a Ph.D. in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree with honors in geophysics and planetary science... More by Jeff Foust
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