SpaceX conducts 13th Super Heavy-Starship test flight, booster splashes down hard off Texas coast

SpaceX lifted off its 13th Super Heavy-Starship vehicle from the Starbase launch site in Texas at 5:51 p.m. ET on Friday. All 33 first-stage Raptor engines ignited and the 397-foot rocket generated roughly 16 million pounds of thrust, climbing through clear skies after a 24-hour weather delay.

The booster performed nominally during ascent and executed a flip maneuver to align for a boost-back burn, but the burn was cut short. As the vehicle descended toward the Gulf, only ten of the planned thirteen engines restarted, and just five appeared to be operating when the booster hit the water, resulting in a higher-speed splashdown than intended. SpaceX said the early termination of the boost-back burn and the reduced engine restart count caused the harder impact.

The upper stage, Starship, continued its suborbital trajectory with all six of its Raptor engines running smoothly. It deployed 20 third-generation Starlink satellites, six of which carried cameras to record the vehicle’s heat-shield condition. The stage also performed a brief in-space Raptor restart, a capability required for future lunar missions, before re-entering the atmosphere belly-first, flipping upright, and splashing down northwest of Australia about 1 hour and 5 minutes after launch.

NASA officials noted that the test provides data for the Human Landing System variant of Starship, which is slated to serve as a lunar lander for the Artemis program. The agency expects to launch up to 15 Super Heavy-Starship tankers to refuel the lander in low-Earth orbit before a crewed mission, with the first lunar landing targeted for 2028.

The Government Accountability Office highlighted ongoing risks, citing challenges with cryogenic fuel management, on-orbit propellant transfer, and the development of upgraded Raptor engines. The GAO also pointed out that SpaceX is more than a year behind its original schedule for key milestones, including critical design reviews and uncrewed lunar landing tests.

NASA is also preparing an interim Artemis flight that will involve an Orion crew capsule docking with a Blue Origin lander and later with a modified Starship production model in low-Earth orbit, though the latter will not carry crew.

"SpaceX's progress in developing its cryogenic fuel management technologies is a top risk for the program," the GAO report said.

"SpaceX is more than a year behind its original schedule for key events," the GAO added.

The test marks the second flight of a third-generation Super Heavy-Starship, building on lessons from the May V3 flight, and underscores the need for further development before the vehicle can be certified for human spaceflight.