SpaceX’s newest model of it is mega rocket Starship goes by means of testing as it’s ready for a check flight from Starbase, Texas, Wednesday, Could 20, 2026.
Eric Homosexual/AP
conceal caption
toggle caption
Eric Homosexual/AP
As SpaceX prepares for its public providing, it is present process a essential check of the biggest rocket ever constructed.
In a while Thursday, the corporate is ready to conduct a launch of a heavily redesigned model of its Starship rocket. The brand new rocket will fly utilizing dozens of recent Raptor 3 engines powered by a novel gas system within the booster. It should additionally carry upgraded avionics, satellites, and check ports for a future refueling system that would enable Starship to at some point attain different locations just like the Moon and even Mars.
The launch comes somewhat below a month earlier than traders count on SpaceX’s much-anticipated preliminary public providing. Many analysts count on SpaceX to boost as much as $75 billion, and to be valued at as much as $1.5 trillion. The quantity raised may make this the biggest IPO ever, and make SpaceX some of the priceless firms on the planet.
However lots of that will relaxation on how Starship performs.
The launch is “tremendous essential for the IPO,” mentioned Franco Granda, a senior researcher who covers SpaceX for the information agency, PitchBook. He believes that if Starship’s launch goes badly, it may trigger traders’ pleasure for the IPO “to decrease fairly dramatically.”
“Regardless that checks are inherently checks, and failure sometimes would not dictate what occurs afterward, I believe SpaceX will need to get this one proper,” he mentioned.
Financial disclosures launched on Wednesday present simply how essential the check is. SpaceX is spending billions of {dollars} per yr creating Starship. The event is consuming up the income from its launch enterprise, which operated at a $662 million loss within the first quarter of this yr.
Low-cost, frequent launches key to the enterprise mannequin
Starship is unlike any rocket ever constructed. Standing at round 400 toes in peak, it is product of sturdy, however heavy, stainless-steel. To beat its bulk, the spacecraft sits atop an infinite booster referred to as “Tremendous Heavy” that shoots it skyward with 33 Raptor engines. After Starship separates from the booster, it may ignite its six engines to get to house, whereas the booster is able to flying again to earth and touchdown at its launchpad.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has mentioned that the final word objective is to make Starship return to the pad, permitting all the system to be reused virtually instantaneously. If it really works, it could radically decrease the price of launches.
That is key to SpaceX’s short-term and long-term imaginative and prescient. The rocket is anticipated to hold bigger, extra succesful satellites for the corporate’s Starlink web service. It is also being developed right into a lunar lander for NASA and as a attainable rocket to Mars. Most lately, Musk proposed that Starship may very well be used to launch information facilities into house, the place they might use solar energy to run AI chips.
“Starship is a essential piece of the puzzle,” Musk mentioned throughout an event in March to unveil a brand new chip fabrication facility. To realize SpaceX’s targets, “you want large payload to house, and Starship will allow that.”
The brand new monetary disclosure doc reveals simply how a lot of SpaceX’s future depends on Starship’s improvement.
“Any failure or delay within the improvement of Starship at scale or in attaining the required launch cadence, reusability and capabilities thereafter would delay or restrict our skill to execute our development technique,” the doc says.
It additionally places actual numbers on how a lot cash SpaceX is spending to develop the large rocket. In 2025, the corporate spent somewhat over $3 billion {dollars}. Within the first quarter of 2026, it spent one other $930 million on Starship improvement.
SpaceX’s new Raptor 3 engines ship extra thrust and include quite a few technological enhancements, however they’ve but to be examined in flight.
SpaceX
conceal caption
toggle caption
SpaceX
Success is much from assured. The primary model of Starship launched in April of 2023, however didn’t separate from its booster and tumbled uncontrolled earlier than exploding. It took three tries earlier than the rocket finally reached house. The second model of the spacecraft was suffering from a number of failed makes an attempt all through 2025, although its remaining two launches went as anticipated.
This third model is an formidable redesign, mentioned Scott Manley, an engineer and YouTuber who intently tracks Starship’s improvement. Manley mentioned that the newest model of Starship is extra refined. Warmth tiles seem extra fastidiously positioned, and clunky, short-term fixes, like a “sizzling staging ring” that was bolted onto the booster after the primary accident, have been built-in into the design.
“It appears to be like extra like a rocket and fewer like a bunch of grain silos welded collectively,” he mentioned.
Manly mentioned he is significantly inquisitive about how the rocket’s new Raptor 3 engines carry out. The engines have been closely redesigned to extend thrust and remove the necessity for cumbersome shielding on the underside of the rocket. The engines have been extensively examined, however they have not been to house earlier than. “We do not know the way they’ll carry out below flight circumstances.”
Even when the most recent model of Starship flies as anticipated, the house launch firm faces a protracted path in direction of making the behemoth rocket work as a enterprise proposition. Starship’s warmth protect has not but confirmed sturdy sufficient to outlive a number of journeys by means of the environment and the spacecraft itself has but to try a touchdown on the pad in Brownsville, Texas.
Getting all of the components of Starship to work as deliberate is much extra complicated than what SpaceX has finished with its current rocket, the Falcon 9, mentioned Tim Farrar, the president of TMF associates, which analyzes cell satellite tv for pc providers. Starship is “a multidimensional downside that they have not really solved but,” he mentioned.
“You possibly can’t justify a valuation nicely in extra of a trillion {dollars} based mostly on what SpaceX is doing right now,” Farrar mentioned. “You have to consider that Musk will provide you with one thing a lot larger than that.”
