The Super Heavy booster for Starship Flight 13 performs a static fire July 10. Credit: SpaceX
WASHINGTON — SpaceX plans to conduct its next Starship launch as soon as July 16 to test fixes to issues from the previous flight and deploy functioning Starlink satellites.
The company said July 11 it is targeting a launch of the Flight 13 mission in a 90-minute window that opens at 6:45 p.m. Eastern from its Starbase, Texas, site. The announcement came a day after completing a static fire of the Super Heavy booster that will launch the mission.
The upcoming mission will fly a similar 65-minute suborbital profile as Flight 12 on May 22. That was the first flight of the upgraded version 3 of the vehicle and was mostly successful, although it experienced some anomalies.
The biggest issue was the failure of the Super Heavy booster to perform a controlled “soft” splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX said it traced the issue to how the engines in the Starship upper stage, or ship, ignited while still attached to the booster.
