SpaceX confirms Starship Flight 13 for July 16, discloses cause of Flight 12 engine issue

SpaceX has confirmed July 16 (6:45pm ET, a 90-minute window) for its 13th integrated Starship test flight, launching from Starbase, Texas.

The flight will deploy 20 working Starlink V3 satellites, which are expected to extend their solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with a ground station in South Africa and with other satellites in the constellation. Six of the 20 satellites carry camera suites to image Starship's heat shield in flight.

Booster 20 carries a revised startup sequence to tolerate timing variability and flip more reliably, plus hardware changes to improve relight reliability and updated engine alarms and abort logic. Upper-stage propulsion modifications address the engine-out issue experienced on Flight 12.

Heat-shield testing has also been expanded — several tiles have been painted white to stand in for missing ones and serve as imaging targets, while load-sensing tiles will record real-time stress during reentry. New tile designs and attachment methods are being tested on the aft flaps and skirts.

SpaceX is using Starship to prove out mass Starlink deployment and full reuse of an orbital-class rocket — a core premise of the Mars colonization roadmap Musk has long emphasized.