SpaceX’s advanced new Starship megarocket will fly for the first time a week from today, if all goes to plan.
SpaceX is targeting May 19 for the debut launch of its Starship V3 (Version 3), a bigger and more capable vehicle that could help humanity take its first steps on the moon and Mars, the company announced Tuesday (May 12).
This will be the 12th flight overall for Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. But it will be the first for Starship V3, which SpaceX says boasts many improvements over its predecessors.
For example, the V3 Super Heavy first stage now has three grid fins — lattice-like structures that help the booster steer its way back to Earth for recovery and reuse — instead of the original four. And each fin is now 50% larger and significantly stronger, according to SpaceX.
“These fins include a new catch point and have been re-clocked on the booster to support vehicle lift and catch operations,” the company wrote in an update today. “They have also been lowered to reduce heat exposure from Starship’s engines during hot-staging.”
SpaceX made many other modifications to Super Heavy as well. For example, the “hot stage” that joins the booster to the Ship upper stage is now integrated into Super Heavy and will not be discarded during flight.
In addition, Super Heavy’s “fuel transfer tube, which channels cryogenic fuel from the main tank to the 33 Raptor engines, has been completely redesigned and is now roughly the size of a Falcon 9 first stage,” SpaceX wrote. “This new design enables all 33 engines to start up simultaneously and faster, more reliable flip maneuvers.”
Ship has been altered significantly as well. For instance, V3 features a “clean-sheet redesign of its propulsion system” — changes that “enable a new Raptor startup method, increase propellant tank volume, and improve the reaction control system used for steering while in flight,” according to SpaceX. “The propulsion updates also reduce contained volumes in the aft end of the vehicle that could trap propellant leakage.”
The new upper stage also sports “propellant feed connections” to support off-Earth fuel transfer — an activity that each Starship will have to perform multiple times on deep-space missions.
V3 Starship is powered by the V3 Raptor, which is more powerful than previous iterations. And the coming maiden launch will also mark the debut of Starbase’s Pad 2, which can fuel Starship faster and sports shorter booster-catching “chopsticks,” among other modifications.
“Together, these new elements are designed to enable a step-change in Starship capabilities and aim to unlock the vehicle’s core functions, including full and rapid reuse, in-space propellant transfer, deployment of Starlink satellites and orbital data centers, and the ability to send people and cargo to the moon and Mars,” SpaceX wrote in the update.
Despite all of these changes, Starship Flight 12 will be broadly similar to its predecessors, according to a mission description that SpaceX posted today.
It will send Ship eastward on a suborbital trajectory. About 17.5 minutes after liftoff, the spacecraft will begin deploying 22 dummy Starlink V2 satellites, an activity that will wrap up about 10 minutes later. The last two of those dummy craft will collect imagery of Ship’s heat shield, to inform the development of future missions. Ship will also relight one of its six Raptor engines in space — something it will need to do on operational flights.
If all goes to plan, Ship will splash down about 65 minutes after launch (presumably in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia, as has been the norm).
Super Heavy, meanwhile, will steer itself to a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after launch. “As this is the first flight test of a significantly redesigned vehicle, the booster will not attempt a return to the launch site for catch,” SpaceX wrote in the mission description, referring to a bold maneuver that Super Heavy has pulled off on multiple previous flights.
Anticipation is high for Flight 12, and not just because of all the upgrades that will see their first-ever action on the launch. Starship hasn’t flown since October 2025, on a test flight that went entirely according to plan.