Starship's 13th Test Flight Countdown! This Critical Flight is Key to SpaceX (SPCX.US)'s Space Ambitions and Trillion-Dollar Valuation

According to Zhitong Finance APP, after aborting a launch attempt last week, SpaceX (SPCX.US) will make another key test attempt of its giant Starship rocket on Thursday. This event will confront investors with the risks inherent to the company’s turbulent R&D cycle and further heighten attention on this critical milestone.

The launch is scheduled for 5:45 p.m. local time from SpaceX’s Starbase in South Texas, USA. This will be the second flight test of the latest version of the rocket, known as Version 3 (V3). The rocket will carry upgraded Starlink satellites into space, which will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up after the test mission.

Starship is central to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s multiple ambitious goals, including deploying data centers into space, expanding the Starlink communications network, and sending humans to the Moon and Mars. However, the project’s developmental path has been unstable, marked by explosive accidents, equipment failures, and numerous delays.

This Starship flight trial marks the rocket’s 13th flight and is also the first test flight since SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history in June. The 13th test flight, originally scheduled for last Thursday, was automatically aborted at the last second due to an engine ignition failure—the 33 Raptor engines at the base of the Super Heavy booster had initiated the ignition process, but some of the engines failed to start properly, prompting the system to trigger an automatic abort and shut down all engines before the rocket left the launch pad.

Although such launch aborts are not uncommon in the large rocket development process, this one came at a sensitive juncture—barely a month after SpaceX’s IPO and amid continuous share price pullbacks. After the abort on Thursday, SpaceX’s share price fell about 3% in after-hours US trading and continued to decline on Friday. This price drop indicates that some investors are growing more sensitive to the risks already present in SpaceX’s rocket development strategy—which involves frequent testing, constant failures, and continuous learning and improvement through failure.

Ivan Feinseth, Chief Investment Officer at Tigress Financial Partners, said: "This aborted launch highlights ongoing execution risks in achieving high-frequency launches and reusable operations for Starship, and further suggests that repeated delays could postpone the company’s revenue growth and profit margin improvement trajectory."

However, some market participants are unfazed by last week’s Starship launch abort. SpaceX adopted a similar approach in its main Falcon 9 rocket program—the Falcon 9 also suffered early setbacks, but now has become the most launched orbital rocket in the world. Caleb Henry, research director at consulting firm Quilty Space, stated: “The fluctuation in SpaceX’s stock price suggests to me that there is still a portion of investors who don’t actually understand the space industry.”

A Crucial Flight

The 13th Starship test flight on Thursday is far from a simple “try again.” The 12th test flight, which took place on May 22, was the maiden flight of the Starship V3 configuration. During ascent, one of the Super Heavy booster’s engines shut down prematurely; after stage separation, the Starship vehicle also lost an engine yet continued its main mission with the remaining engines. Subsequently, during the boost-back burn, five Raptor engines failed to reignite as planned, ending the burn early and causing the booster to impact the ocean at a higher speed.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) subsequently launched an investigation. The final report determined that the booster's return failure most likely involved two causes: the thermal environment during ascent affected propellant system components, and the engine alert system had parameter-setting issues. The FAA accepted four corrective actions proposed by SpaceX, closed the investigation on July 13, and cleared the way for the 13th test flight.

The main goal of the 13th test is to verify if the issues exposed during the 12th flight have been truly resolved, including whether the propellant system components are under control, whether engine alert parameters accurately identify anomalies, and whether the boost-back burn can be completed as planned.

However, the July 16 launch abort has increased the challenge. After completing the previous round of corrections, a new Super Heavy booster once again revealed engine issues during ground startup. Musk later stated that SpaceX would replace two Raptor engines and postpone the next attempt to July 23.

For a rocket still in the experimental stage, encountering issues is not unexpected. The key is whether similar problems recur and whether each flight achieves verifiable progress based on data from the previous round. The real significance of the 13th Starship test flight lies in whether SpaceX can turn the data from the last flight into genuine and effective engineering improvements for the next round.

It is worth noting that, in addition to propulsion system verification, Thursday’s 13th test flight will also involve tests for the deployment of 20 Starlink V3 satellites. Unlike previous tests mainly carrying dummy payloads, these satellites will test solar panel and antenna deployment as well as laser communications with the existing Starlink network after deployment. Although they won’t enter long-term operational orbit and will re-enter the atmosphere roughly 20 minutes after release, Starship thus begins verifying its true payload delivery and satellite deployment capabilities.

Starlink is currently SpaceX’s most important cash engine, and the V3 satellites are critical for the next phase of network capacity. Limited by payload capacity and fairing size, Falcon 9 is inadequate for large-scale V3 satellite deployment. If Starship cannot be put into operation, the wide-scale networking of Starlink V3 must continue to wait. Once operational, however, SpaceX can transport more satellites per mission, significantly boosting constellation expansion efficiency and opening new growth for Starlink.

In summary, regarding the 13th Starship test flight, the capital markets care not only about whether the mission is eventually labeled as a “success” or “partial success,” but want confirmation as to whether exposed problems have been resolved and whether Starship is moving toward practical use with each flight attempt.

If the rocket successfully completes the V3 satellite deployment, spacecraft engine restart, reentry, and controlled splashdown, SpaceX will achieve an almost full verification of the V3 configuration. Should ascent and satellite deployment proceed smoothly, even if the return phase encounters issues, the mission will still have distinct value, at the very least confirming Starship’s ability to deploy real payloads.

More negative outcomes would be recurrence of engine ignition problems on the pad, or a repetition of the propulsion system anomalies from the 12th test flight during flight. This could indicate that the issue is not limited to individual engines, forcing SpaceX to re-examine its propellant systems, thermal environment, alert logic, or hardware consistency, potentially slowing the subsequent flight schedule.

SpaceX has already built the world’s most frequent commercial launch system with Falcon 9 and developed Starlink into a satellite internet network with tens of millions of users. Whether further growth opportunities can be unlocked depends greatly on when Starship matures and is ready for the deployment of V3 satellites, moon missions, and the construction of orbital computing infrastructure.