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SpaceX Attempts Major Flight Test Again in Post-IPO Spotlight

Sana Pashankar

Thu, July 23, 2026 at 5:30 AM EDT3 min read

(Bloomberg) -- SpaceX will again attempt a major test of its massive Starship rocket on Thursday after abandoning takeoff last week, exposing investors to the risks of the company's rocky development cycle and heightening the stakes for the critical milestone.

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The launch, targeted for 5:45 p.m. local time from SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas, marks the second flight of the latest iteration of the rocket, dubbed Version 3 or V3. The rocket will be carrying to space upgraded Starlink satellites that are intended to burn up later in the atmosphere as part of the test mission.

Starship is central to SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk's ambitions to put data centers in space, expand the Starlink communications network and send humans to the moon and Mars. But it has faced an unstable development path marred by explosive setbacks, malfunctions and delays.

The Starship test is the rocket's 13th flight and first since SpaceX's blockbuster initial public offering in June that raised a record $86 billion.

Last Thursday, the company halted its flight attempt right at liftoff, as plumes of smoke erupted around the launch tower but the rocket remained in place. Later, Musk said in a post on X that some of Starship's engines didn't ignite, triggering an automatic abort.

Musk added in a separate post that two of the vehicle's engines would be replaced and removed before the company tried the flight test again.

Although a scrubbed launch is relatively common in rocketry, SpaceX's shares fell about 3% in US postmarket trading on Thursday following the attempt. On Friday, the stock continued to tumble, resulting in a market value that was $1 trillion less than a peak reached on the company's third day of trading.

The aborted attempt "underscores ongoing execution risk around ramping Starship to high cadence, reusable operations, and reinforces that repeated delays could push out revenue and margin trajectories," said Ivan Feinseth, chief investment officer at Tigress Financial Partners.

The selloff demonstrates how certain investors are sensitive to the type of risks that have become baked into SpaceX's rocket development strategy of testing frequently, often failing and learning from it.

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The company took a similar approach with its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which faced its own hiccups early on but has since become the most prolific launch vehicle in the world.

The share volatility "shows me that there's still a chunk of investors out there that truly don't understand the space industry," said Caleb Henry, director of research at consulting firm Quilty Space.

Musk's company has designed Starship to be fully reusable, something no other rocket maker has achieved, with both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft intended to return to Earth intact after each launch so they can fly to space again. SpaceX has spent more than $15 billion developing Starship.

SpaceX also holds roughly $4 billion worth of NASA contracts for Starship to land astronauts on the moon as soon as 2028. To do so, SpaceX will have to refuel the vehicle in space, launch it a dozen times or more in a row and ensure it's safe to hold humans — a demanding list of tasks for a vehicle which has yet to complete a full orbital mission.

Thursday's flight plan will look similar to previous test missions.

At liftoff, the Super Heavy booster will ignite 33 Raptor engines and send Starship on its way to space, where it will reach near orbital speeds. The booster will separate from Starship and then attempt to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico.

While in space, Starship will attempt a number of tests, including relighting one of its engines and deploying 20 Starlink satellites. These satellites will extend their solar arrays and attempt to connect to the broader Starlink network using laser-based communications.

About 20 minutes after deployment, the satellites should fall back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere.

About an hour after liftoff, Starship is scheduled to splash down in the Indian Ocean.

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