Starship | Flight 13

Launch Provider & Rocket

• Provider: SpaceX (Commercial)
• Rocket: Starship V3 — Starship family

Mission

13th test flight of the two-stage Starship launch vehicle. Second flight of Starship V3. For the first time, Starship will carry 20 V3 Starlink satellites to space, which will extend solar arrays and antennas and will attempt to connect with ground stations in South Africa and the larger Starlink constellation via high-capacity lasers. 6 of the satellites have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to continue testing methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions. Several tiles on Starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test.

• Type: Test Flight
• Orbit: Suborbital (Sub)

Launch Site

• Pad: Orbital Launch Pad 2
• Location: SpaceX Starbase, TX, USA
• View on map

Program

• SpaceX Starship — The SpaceX Starship is a fully reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX since 2012, as a self-funded private spaceflight project. The second stage of the Starship — is designed as a long-duration cargo and passenger-carrying spacecraft. It is expected to be initially used without any booster stage at all, as part of an extensive development program to prove out launch-and-landing and iterate on a variety of design details, particularly with respect to the vehicle's atmospheric reentry. (Wikipedia)