Starship Flight 13 Succeeds Despite Booster Engine Failures
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- SpaceX launched its 13th Super Heavy-Starship rocket Friday at 5:51 p.m. EDT from Starbase, Texas, with all 33 Raptor engines firing normally after a July 16 attempt was aborted when four Raptors failed to start properly
- The Super Heavy booster dropped into the Gulf 'hard' at higher velocity than expected after only 5 of 13 engines were running at splashdown, prompting SpaceX to choose Gulf splashdowns over chopstick catches for early V3 flights as a safety precaution
- The Starship upper stage deployed 20 third-generation Starlink satellites—one at a time from a nose-mounted dispenser—six of which carried cameras to inspect heat shield tiles, before completing a sub-orbital hop to the Indian Ocean and splashing down fully intact 1 hour 5 minutes after liftoff
- NASA's Artemis program is counting on a Starship variant as its Human Landing System, requiring up to 15 tanker launches to refuel the lander in orbit before it can carry two astronauts to the lunar south pole, with the first landing targeted for 2028
- The GAO reported Thursday that SpaceX is more than a year behind original schedule on key milestones including critical design review, propellant transfer demonstrations, and the uncrewed lunar landing test, citing cryogenic fuel management as a top risk
- Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket exploded during a main engine test fire, destroying the vehicle and damaging the pad, leaving NASA's backup lunar lander option grounded until the company can resume test flights, which it hopes to do by year's end
Why it matters: NASA's 2028 Artemis lunar landing target just became harder to hit: a GAO report confirmed SpaceX is over a year behind schedule on critical milestones including propellant transfer, and the backup Blue Origin lander just lost its rocket in a pad explosion. With neither lunar lander option fully validated, the agency's south pole mission faces mounting schedule risk.
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