SpaceX's Massive Starship Roars Back to Life in First Launch Since IPO

SpaceX sent its massive Starship rocket roaring off the pad at Starbase, Texas on Friday evening, marking the vehicle's 13th test flight and its very first since the company's record-breaking initial public offering last month. The flight came after a string of setbacks, including a July 16 engine-abort scrub and repeated weather delays, making Friday's clean liftoff a welcome sight for investors who have been watching Starship's progress closely. The Super Heavy booster executed a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, while the upper stage relit its engine in space, successfully reentered the atmosphere, and pulled off what SpaceX described as its softest splashdown yet, touching down upright in the Indian Ocean before eventually tipping over. Employees at the company have already nicknamed the flight "lucky number 13."

Beyond the dramatic launch and landing sequence, Friday's mission also delivered a major milestone for SpaceX's satellite business: the first-ever orbital-path deployment of the next-generation Starlink V3 satellites. That achievement represents a critical step toward SpaceX's ambitions to rapidly scale up its Starlink satellite internet network, a business investors are watching just as closely as the rocket program itself following the company's blockbuster IPO. With Starship now central to both SpaceX's space ambitions and its satellite internet revenue, every test flight carries growing weight for shareholders eager to see the hardware mature into a reliable, repeatable system.

The stakes extend well beyond Earth's orbit. NASA is counting on Starship to ferry American astronauts back to the lunar surface as soon as 2028, a timeline the agency hopes will keep the United States ahead of China's own accelerating moon ambitions. Friday's clean run represents concrete progress toward that goal, even as SpaceX acknowledges the vehicle still has a long road ahead before it's ready to carry a human crew. For now, though, the successful splashdowns, the Starlink milestone, and the timing right after a record IPO have combined to give SpaceX one of its strongest weeks yet in the public eye.