SpaceX Postpones Starship Flight 12: First V3 Rocket Launch to Friday

SpaceX called off the launch of its Starship rocket on Thursday after loading the vehicle onto a newly constructed launch pad at Starbase, its company town in South Texas. A 90-minute window opened at 6:30 p.m. ET, but no kickoff followed. During a live broadcast of the event, SpaceX’s video hosts confirmed that the company had “completely loaded the vehicle” before cleanup was called.

The company has not confirmed the exact rescheduled time, but a second attempt is expected on Friday.

What is Starship V3 and why this launch matters

The vehicle at the center of Thursday’s delay is Starship Version 3, the most powerful and technologically advanced iteration of SpaceX’s flagship to date.

The two-stage system, standing 408 feet tall when fully stacked, generates 18 million pounds of thrust and is designed, according to SpaceX’s IPO prospectus filed Wednesday, to “deliver 100 metric tons to Earth orbit in a fully reusable configuration while enabling rapid turnaround times similar to commercial aviation.”

Read also | SpaceX files for long-awaited IPO

Flight 12 would be the first test flight for this new block upgrade. Five Starship version 2 flights were completed during 2025, but the transition to version 3 was not without difficulties. Two explosive incidents during ground testing destroyed the Super Heavy booster and the starship’s upper stage before the program reached this point.

There are no astronauts or payloads on board for this test. SpaceX carries fake Starlink satellites in their place.

Starship Flight 12 Mission Profile: Satellites, Heat Shield Tests and Engine Backlights

The planned mission was remarkable for the breadth of objectives packed into a single suborbital flight.

The twenty Starlink simulator satellites were to be deployed into a suborbital trajectory within about 10 minutes, starting about 17 minutes after launch. Two other modified Starlink satellites had a separate and specific role: scanning the Starship’s heat shield and relaying images to operators on the ground.

Several tiles on the upper stage were painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets, part of SpaceX’s ongoing effort to develop reliable methods for evaluating the readiness of the heat shield ahead of future flights.

Read also | SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI’s sprint to the public defines the big day of the artificial intelligence boom

A Raptor engine re-ignition was also planned for approximately 39 minutes of the mission, during the coast phase. The exercise is intended to generate data that will inform future deorbit burns as SpaceX eventually transitions Starship from suborbital to fully orbital flight profiles.

Super Heavy Booster 19 was not supposed to return on this flight due to the turret capture. Instead, it was scheduled to make a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico roughly seven minutes after takeoff, a deliberate concession to the novelty of the vehicle. Ship 39, the upper stage, was to follow more than an hour after liftoff with its own controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX’s IPO filing reveals $15 billion starship investment and $657 million loss for space segment

The bush landed on the back of a major financial revelation. On Wednesday, SpaceX filed its IPO prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, offering an unusually detailed look at the economics behind the Starship program.

Read also | From IPO hype to Nasdaq debut plans: 10 things you should know about Elon Musk

The company has confirmed that it has invested more than $15 billion in the development of Starship. The filing also revealed the financial performance of its space business: “In 2025, our space segment generated an operating loss of $657 million and segment adjusted EBITDA of $653 million, including the impact of funding ($3 billion) in research and development spending for our next-generation Starship launch vehicle program,” the company wrote.

The filing made clear how central Starlink remains to the company’s overall financial health. The connectivity unit brought in $11.4 billion in revenue and $4.4 billion in operating income in 2025, representing 61 percent of SpaceX’s total revenue for the year and 69 percent in the first quarter.

Regarding Starship’s strategic importance, the prospectus was straightforward: “the company’s growth strategy depends on our ability to increase our launch cadence and payload capacity, which depends on the successful large-scale development of Starship.”

NASA Moon Landing and Mars Ambitions Riding on Starship Success

The supply pressure goes far beyond commercial satellite launches. NASA has contracted SpaceX to use Starship as a lunar lander for its Artemis IV mission, currently scheduled for early 2028. The mission would see American astronauts return to the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century.

Read also | Elon Musk’s SpaceX is filing for the largest IPO in stock market history

Elon Musk has also long articulated broader ambitions for the vehicle: to use the Starship to transport cargo and up to 100 people at a time toward Mars as part of his stated goal of establishing a human presence on the planet.

What comes next: Flight 13 could be the first orbital launch of a starship

The delay of Flight 12 also delays what might come next. SpaceX has previously said that a successful outcome of this test could open the door for Flight 13 to attempt a fully orbital trajectory, although no firm commitments have been made in this area.

Read also | OpenAI IPO: ChatGPT creator likely to file draft papers soon amid SpaceX IPO buzz

SpaceX is now turning its attention to Friday’s rescheduling window and the question of whether Starship V3 can complete the debut flight that its developers have spent years of testing, failures and more than $15 billion in investment preparing for.