SpaceX Reveals New Starship Launch Date to Make History in ORBIT! Never Done Before

If you had more money than anyone else on Earth, like legitimately the richest person alive, what would you do with it? Retire in absolute luxury, sip cocktails on your own private island, zero responsibilities, pure bliss, and sure, it wouldn't be anything like Little St. James. But Elon Musk, he looked at that same mountain of money and said, "Let's build a rocket." According to SpaceX's IPO financial filings, the company has spent over $15 billion developing Starship. And

that figure becomes almost absurd when you hold it next to Falcon 9, which cost roughly $400 million to develop. That's not a rounding error. That's a completely different universe of investment. So why does he keep going? Why keep pouring money into this? Because Starship isn't just another rocket. Starship is how humanity changes its relationship with space forever. Falcon 9 moves satellites. Starship moves civilizations. That's the difference. And that's why Musk keeps pushing. And that momentum, it's

not slowing down for anyone. After flight 12, the FAA acknowledged there had been an anomaly with the booster during the flyback phase. But instead of immediately opening a mishap investigation and making life difficult for SpaceX the way they have in the past, the agency simply put out a statement saying they were assessing the operation and that a mishap determination has not been made at this time. It almost feels like the FAA has finally started to grasp

just how significant Starship really is. And before the dust had even settled on that flight, less than a week later, official details about flight 13 were already starting to surface. What we found was more interesting than anyone expected. SpaceX filed a special temporary authority or STA with the FCC for Starship test flight 13. And here's the part that'll make you do a double take. They filed it 2 months ago. You did not mishar that. While the

rest of us were still watching Flight 12 replays, SpaceX was already meticulously planning the next one, the authorized window, May the 29th, 2026 through November 29th, 2026. A full 6-month launch window. So, the launch is confirmed somewhere inside that range. Could be June, could slide into July. We'll break that timeline down in just a moment. But honestly, the when is almost secondary to the what, because the flight profile is where things get really interesting, the flight

profile. And this is the part worth paying close attention to. Super Heavy's configuration will be similar to flight 12. It'll splash down in the ocean again. But ship, she is going orbital, full orbital flight. And this is a historic first. This is the very first time SpaceX has ever requested radio frequencies for a full orbital ship profile. That's not just an incremental step forward. That is a statement. Are you as hyped as I am right now?

If yes, drop a go 13 in the comments below. Let's see it. And if you haven't subscribed yet, hit that button because next up, we're going deep on the actual launch date for Starship Flight 13. And trust me, you do not want to miss that. Now, predicting a launch date isn't something you do by throwing a dart at a calendar. A real launch timeline depends on a web of variables. Vehicle readiness, launchpad status, regulatory approvals, and

official word from SpaceX itself. So, y before we talk dates, let's do what we always do here. Start with the hardware. According to the current plan, the first two Starship V3 vehicles, ship 39 and booster 19, have already made their mark out over the ocean. So, the natural next pair in line is ship 40 and booster 20. And here's a fun detail. Divide ship's number by booster's number, and you get exactly two, which actually aligns perfectly

with something Elon Musk once said. The Starship production pipeline is full and will complete roughly 10 more ships and about half that number of boosters this year. This isn't a coincidence. It's deliberate production strategy. SpaceX intentionally builds twice as many ships as boosters, and for good reason. Ships are more complex, and they need more of them for orbital flights, propellant transfer, and eventually Mars missions. Boosters, on the other hand, are larger, more expensive to manufacture. So

SpaceX offsets that by prioritizing catch and rapid reuse to get more flights out of each one. All right, enough on production philosophy. Let's check in on ship 40 specifically. This second Starship Vivi 3 completed stacking in early March 2026 and arrived fully heat shielded, looking every bit as clean and polished as ship 39 did before flight. Every bit that is, except for the 18,000 ceramic heat shield tiles on ship 39 that came back scorched after surviving

re-entry. Ship 40's tiles still pristine for now. In early May, ship 40 was rolled out to Massiey's test site where it completed two cryogenic proof tests on May 3rd and 4th. Both passed with flying colors validating the full pressure bearing structure of both the LOX and CH4 tanks. Then on May 6th, it was rolled back to Mega Bay 2 to begin Raptor 3 engine installation. That was roughly 3 weeks ago. As of now, ship 40 is

still in final integration. Engines going in, plumbing being routed, last systems being buttoned up, working toward a full six engine static fire in the near future. Based on current pace, that window looks like somewhere between June 10th and June 20th, give or take. The slight delay is deliberate. SpaceX collected gigabytes of flight data from ship 39. Heat shield performance, engine behavior, the flip and catch maneuver, and they're taking the time to study it and apply those

lessons to ship 40 before proceeding. Now, here's where the timeline math gets interesting. Ship 39 completed its full cryo campaign on March 8th, 2026, then flew on May 22nd, 2026, exactly 75 days later, or roughly 2 and 1/2 months. Ship 40 completed its cryo tests on May 3rd to 4th, 2026, and is currently in engine installation. With the experience gained from the first V3 vehicle, ship 40's integration timeline is noticeably faster. If we apply that same

75day benchmark from cryo completion, flight 13 could very realistically land before mid July 2026 and potentially even earlier. That optimism isn't unfounded either. Elon Musk himself once said, "Failure today will not affect schedule by more than a month or so." But this is where we need to pump the brakes because the real bottleneck for flight 13 is no longer ship 40. It's booster 20. And it all traces back to what happened with booster 19 on flight

12. After stage separation, booster 19 flipped so rapidly and so abnormally that most of its engines failed in cascade. By the time the landing burn was supposed to happen, only a single engine managed to ignite and the booster slammed into the Gulf of Mexico at over 1,450 km hour. That wasn't a splashdown. That was an impact. And while SpaceX had already accepted the possibility of losing the booster on this first V3 flight, the why behind that

flip is what matters because every lesson from that failure has to be fully understood and applied to booster 20 before it ever sees the launch pad. So yes, ship 40 is on track, but booster 20 is the variable that could quietly push flight 13 from June into July or later. the 75day calculation we ran earlier. Assume both vehicles would be ready at roughly the same time. And right now they're not. When it comes to when flight

13 actually launches, booster 20 is the honest answer. But here's the thing. Don't lose too much sleep over it. This time around, SpaceX isn't burning weeks refining and upgrading Pad 2's infrastructure the way they had to before flight 12. Pad 2 was engineered right from the start. birectional flame trench, water cooled deflector, an optimized OM, a larger tank farm, faster electromechanical chopstick actuators, and after its very first flight, it proved just how resilient the whole system

really is. No major repairs, no scrambling to bolt on extra cooling plates, no damage control. The pad just held up. Pad 2 has genuinely come into its own and it's ready to support a faster launch cadence going forward. At this point, SpaceX really just needs to roll out ship 40 and booster 20 and they can move into launch prep relatively quickly. Flight 13 is in good shape. It's just waiting on booster 20 to finish its processing.

A much tighter flight cadence is coming and it's closer than you might think. Recently, the chopsticks were lowered so that large cranes could bring workers up to remove and install several key components related to the booster catch and ship catch mechanisms. Will they attempt to catch the ship as early as flight 13? We'll analyze that possibility later because there's even better news to discuss first. The FAA has issued a temporary flight restriction for the Massiey's test

site area specifically for rocket booster testing. The restriction runs from June 4th through June 16th. This is almost certainly the schedule SpaceX submitted for booster 20's first cryop proof test. It might sound excessive after all. It's just a ground test. But if booster 20 were to fail catastrophically like New Glenn recently did and send a massive fireball into the sky, any aircraft flying overhead could create serious problems and a few lawsuits. In any case, booster 20

has officially rolled out. It was moved out of the mega bay on the 4th. Just look at it. Gleaming with that beautiful 0.4 cm thick stainless steel, incredibly tall, and with what looks like a little mini TNT bomb accessory hanging on its forward dome. Let's hope it's just some kind of decorative or test fixture. They were originally scheduled to roll it out that same day, but the self-propelled modular transporter kept getting flat tires from hauling nearly

200 tons of steel. They had to stop for repairs and it only made it to Massie the following day. The cryo test is expected very soon, possibly as early as today, June 6th, or tomorrow, June 7th, if there's any delay. Either way, it's a step they definitely won't skip. A cryop proof test is a critical milestone before any flight. Every Starship and Superheavy booster is unique with upgrades and fixes implemented after previous missions, so this test

is essential. Super Heavy and Starship both use cryogenic propellants, liquid oxygen at around minus 183° C, and liquid methane at around minus62° C. At these extremely low temperatures, the 304L stainless steel contract significantly becomes more brittle and puts enormous stress on every weld seal valve and pipe. If there's any weakness, it's far better to discover it now. Just remember booster 18. It exploded at the Massie test site right before its cryo test. That was painful, but

still much better than if it had happened later with all 33 engines installed and several thousand tons of propellant already loaded on board. That's the booster side of the equation. But what about its counterpart ship 40? If anything, the upper stage is actually ahead of the booster. Ship 40 already cleared its cryo testing campaign back in early May. A brutal series of pressure tests pushing the propellant tanks to their limits with cryogenic fluids. That box is

checked. Now it's deep into engine installation inside Mega Bay 2, and the pace has been striking. On the evening of June 4th, the first three Raptor engines arrived at the bay. Two sea level variants and one Raptor vacuum. The following afternoon, the remaining three were delivered. Six engines all accounted for with installation already underway and expected to wrap up early next week. Now, it's worth pausing here because installing a Raptor isn't like swapping out a component.

This is one of the most complex pieces of propulsion hardware ever built. Raptor 3 runs on a full flow stage combustion cycle, burning liquid methane at minus 162° C against liquid oxygen at - 183° C inside a combustion chamber operating at pressures up to 350 bar. Each engine produces over 280 metric tons of thrust with exhaust temperatures running into the thousands of degrees. The engineering going on inside Mega Bay 2 right now is extraordinary by any

standard. Getting these engines onto the ship involves multiple layers of precision work happening simultaneously. The propellant interfaces, the large LOX and methane feed lines. The transfer tubes have to be connected without a single leak point. Because at cryogenic temperatures, even a hairline crack doesn't just cause a pressure drop. It causes a disaster. The regenerative cooling channels, which are integrated directly into the engine structure itself, need to be plumbed correctly to keep the engine from destroying itself

during firing. The electrical and control system sensors, actuators, the data bus, the TVC gimbal on the center engine, all have to be wired and verified. And then the entire assembly has to be bolted into the thrust structure. The stainless steel frame that has to transfer hundreds of thousands of pounds of force through the vehicle without flexing, shifting or leaking. Every engine has to be aligned to millimeter precision. So the thrust vector is correct. One degree off

and you're not going to orbit. You're going somewhere else entirely. So yes, early next week for engine installation completion is an aggressive timeline, but SpaceX has been here before and they know what they're doing. Once ship 40 has its engines installed, the next milestone is a static fire, a full engine test while the vehicle is held down on the stand. And that's where the flight 13 timeline starts to come into focus. The reference point here is

ship 39. It completed its first successful static fire on April 14th, then launched on May 22nd as flight 12, a gap of just over 5 weeks. If ship 40 follows a similar cadence and if pad turnaround at Starbase continues at the pace we've been watching, then early July starts to look like a realistic target for flight 13. June feels too aggressive given where things stand right now. But July, the pieces are moving in that direction faster

than most people realize. So, what do you think? Will Flight 13 actually launch in July? Drop a yes in the comments if you believe it, no if you don't. Let's see which side wins. Now, let's get back to something we mentioned at the top of the video, but haven't dug into yet, the chopsticks, because this is where the real post-flight work has been happening. Starting June 2nd, crews systematically dismantled the entire catch rail assembly on the

Mechazilla arms. The catch rails are the components that make direct contact with the booster during a catch attempt. And attached to them are the dampers and springs responsible for absorbing the enormous kinetic energy of a returning Superheavy. They came off one by one. Four on the first day, the fifth completed the following morning. Then on June 3rd, the chopstick arms moved for the first time since flight 12. That first motion test bringing the arms down for

a post-flight inspection is more significant than it sounds. It confirmed that the arms themselves are mechanically sound, that whatever froze them after the flight was a controls issue, not structural damage. A small distinction, but a critical one. By June 4th, the team was ready to start putting things back together. The first catch rail went up and immediately came back down. It didn't fit. What followed was a full day of careful adjustment, workshaving tolerances, and realigning mounting

points until the geometry was exactly right. By evening, the first rail locked into place on the right arm. Shortly after the left side followed, both catch rails reinstalled in a single day after getting the fit right. This is the kind of detail that doesn't make headlines, but matters enormously for the program. The catch system on Mechazilla is arguably the most mechanically demanding component at the entire launch site. It has to stop a 70 m tall, 200

metric ton booster falling out of the sky and dissipate all of that energy without destroying either the booster or the tower. After flight 12, the first catch ever attempted from this pad. With this configuration, SpaceX isn't just checking a box. They're learning exactly how the hardware behaved under real flight loads, finding where tolerances drifted and correcting them before the next attempt. But the chopsticks weren't the only thing getting this level of attention. Right beneath them, the

launch mount itself was going through the exact same process. On June 3rd, crews pulled all 17 ball mounts from launch mount 2. 16 in a single day, one carried over from the day before. The entire set removed, inspected, and by June 4th, reinstalled with fresh hardware. Ball mounts aren't glamorous components, but they're load critical. They're what allows the hold down system to accommodate micro movements. The booster flexing, vibrating, settling during the critical seconds before and after

liftoff. On a rocket the size of Super Heavy, those loads are extraordinary. After the first flight from a brand new launch mount, you want to know exactly what those components experienced. Did they deform? Did the metal fatigue in ways that wouldn't be visible to the naked eye? You don't assume. You check. The fact that SpaceX pulled all 17, inspected them, and had them back in place within roughly 48 hours is the rapid iteration philosophy in its

most literal form. The pad doesn't stop. The clock doesn't stop. You use every hour of downtime to validate the hardware, and you put it back together before the next team needs the space. All of this is essentially aerospace meal prep at a massive scale. Everything staged, sequenced, and ready so nobody's scrambling when launch day actually arrives. And flight 13 is worth preparing for. This is the second flight of the V3 architecture pairing booster 20 with ship

40, and it could shape the direction of the entire program going forward. The biggest question hanging over it is whether Spac X will push for orbit this time. The opportunity is genuinely there. If all 33 Raptors perform cleanly on the way up, hot staging goes smoothly, and the booster completes its job without issue, ship 40 has a real shot at continuing to accelerate toward orbital velocity. But to get there, the ship needs to avoid engine failures,

sustain thrust for an extended burn, and successfully execute inspace engine restarts. A lot has to go right, but none of it is beyond what this vehicle was designed to do. If it does, that's not just a milestone for Starship. Reaching orbit is the moment a launch vehicle stops being a prototype and starts being a rocket.