SpaceX Starship-Super Heavy Thirteenth Flight Test

SCANALYZER The Happening World
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This topic discusses the forthcoming SpaceX thirteenth flight test of the integrated Starship (#40) and Super Heavy booster (#20), currently scheduled for launch no earlier than 2026-07-16 22:45 UTC with a 90 minute launch window. This is the second Block 3 flight and the first to deploy live Starlink V3 satellites:

For the first time, Starship will carry V3 Starlink satellites to space, which aim to greatly expand the network’s capacity and user speeds. As part of this initial test, Starship is planned to deploy 20 satellites which will extend solar arrays and antennas and will attempt to connect with ground stations in South Africa and the larger Starlink constellation via high-capacity lasers. The Starlink satellites will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship.

Six of the satellites have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to continue testing methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions. Several tiles on Starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test.

There ae a number of modifications relating to separation and boostback re-light to address the FT12 problems.

The planned flight, if successful, will, mirroring prior flights ,launch the craft on a near-orbital trajectory, with the first stage booster performing a boost back burn and hard water landing in the Gulf of America, and the upper stage Starship accelerating to a velocity slightly less than orbital speed, causing it to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.

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Scrub.

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To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed & replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2026
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Current plan Monday 2026/07/20 22:45 UTC.

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Now pushed back to same time Thursday:

Now targeting to launch Starship’s thirteenth flight test as early as Thursday, July 23 → https://t.co/Rp7VwBzpWx pic.twitter.com/Y0YNzfc5zk

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 19, 2026
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Google $GOOGL discloses holding $94 billion worth of SpaceX $SPCX stock.

WatcherGuru

From Grok:

Confirmed. Alphabet (Google’s parent) disclosed in its Q2 2026 SEC filing that it holds $94.1 billion in SpaceX (SPCX) equity.

This is the mark-to-market value of its long-held stake (roughly 5–6% after dilution), not a new purchase. Google invested as part of a ~$1 billion round with Fidelity in 2015 (Google’s portion estimated $500–900 million) when SpaceX was valued around $10–12 billion.

SpaceX went public in June 2026. About $80 billion of Alphabet’s holding is under short-term post-IPO sale restrictions; another $14.1 billion is locked until Q3 2027. These are mostly unrealized paper gains.

The disclosure explained most of Alphabet’s large unrealized investment gains reported for the quarter.

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Now targeting Friday, July 24 for Starship’s thirteenth flight test, due to weather.

A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship’s heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won't be possible with today's… pic.twitter.com/O4qyJaXjVs

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 23, 2026
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