SpaceX Targets July 23 Starship Launch as SPCX Falls Below IPO

SpaceX confirmed it is targeting July 23 for the 13th test flight of its Starship after a last-second pad abort at its Starbase facility in Texas on July 16. Four of 33 booster engines failed to ignite about one second before liftoff, triggering an automatic abort.

The 407-foot rocket remained on the pad when the abort sequence shut down the remaining 29 engines. SpaceX said two engines will be replaced before the next launch window. Elon Musk wrote on X that swapping those engines was intended “to be confident of a good flight.”

The mission profile remains a roughly one-hour, space-skimming hop that will travel about halfway around the world while carrying 20 of SpaceX’s newest Starlink satellites. Cameras will photograph the vehicle’s heat shield and the launched Starlinks will attempt to communicate with orbiting Starlink satellites. Neither the booster nor the spacecraft is planned for recovery on this flight.

The July 16 abort affected trading in the company’s newly public shares, listed under the SPCX ticker. The stock closed at $123.10 on the day of the scrub, its first close below the $135 IPO price since the June 12 listing, which raised roughly $75 billion and valued the company above $1.75 trillion. SPCX has pulled back from highs above $160, a decline linked in part to investor concerns about dilution tied to a $60 billion all-stock acquisition of AI coding firm Cursor. A single-day slide erased about $150 billion from Elon Musk’s net worth.

SpaceX also disclosed holdings of 18,712 bitcoins in its corporate treasury. The company joined the Nasdaq-100 index weeks after listing.

NASA is monitoring Starship because the agency plans to use a version of the vehicle as the lunar lander for its Artemis program. NASA requires operational landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin in time for Artemis III crews to practice docking procedures next year. Before astronauts can fly on Starship to the moon, the vehicle must demonstrate orbital refueling and an uncrewed lunar touchdown. The moon-landing mission is scheduled for no earlier than 2028.

SpaceX has flown Starship about a dozen times in development tests. The July 16 abort was the first last-second pad abort of a full-scale Starship. Company engineers are replacing engines and preparing the vehicle for the July 23 window. A successful flight would add to the vehicle’s test record and advance NASA’s timeline.