SpaceX postponed its Starship Flight 13 for the second time, shifting the launch to Friday, July 24. The latest delay came as Tropical Storm Bertha brought heavy cloud cover over South Texas. SpaceX needs clear skies to capture vital footage of Starship’s heat shield during ascent, which the storm made impossible.
The launch window opens at 5:45 p.m. CT Friday, with a 90-minute window for the attempt. This setback follows an earlier aborted launch on July 16, when four out of 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy Booster 20 failed to ignite, triggering an automated abort at liftoff.
In the week after the initial failure, SpaceX dismantled the vehicle, replaced two Raptor engines, conducted leak checks, and restacked the rocket on Pad 2. Now, instead of engine trouble, the challenge is simply visibility due to the storm’s cloud cover.
Flight 13 is notable for carrying 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites, marking the first time SpaceX sends live satellites on Starship rather than test simulators. Six of these satellites have onboard cameras aimed at inspecting the heat shield from orbit, providing engineers an additional source of data alongside the ground-based imagery that the weather currently obscures.
This flight will be the second mission for the V3 versions of both Starship and Super Heavy, following their debut on Flight 12 in May. Booster 20 plans to perform a boostback burn before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico, while Ship 40 will follow a suborbital trajectory toward a landing in the Indian Ocean. Compared to Flight 12, the booster will execute a more aggressive ascent burn after reaching max dynamic pressure (max Q), and the heat shield features load-sensing tiles to measure stresses at these higher pressures.
Despite these delays, analysts remain optimistic about SpaceX's stock outlook. TipRanks data shows a strong buy consensus with 23 buy ratings out of 29 total, and an average price target around $243.
