Space Exploration · 2026-07-16

Thirteen Test Flights. Dozens of Explosions. Now Starship Is Done Practicing.

Two years ago, the world's biggest rocket exploded on its second attempt. The fireball was visible for 80 miles. Social media called it a failure. SpaceX called it data.

Today, that same rocket completed its 13th test flight. And according to engineers tracking the program, it may have just been the last time Starship ever does a suborbital arc.

The next flight? All the way around the Earth.

The shift: Suborbital means going up and coming back down without ever completing an orbit. Every Starship flight so far has done exactly that — a controlled arc through the edge of space. Orbital means traveling fast enough to circle the planet. That's a completely different beast.

First — How Big Is This Thing?

To understand why this matters, you need to understand the scale. Starship isn't just a big rocket. It's the biggest thing humanity has ever tried to fly — repeatedly.

122mTotal height — taller than the Statue of Liberty twice over

33Raptor engines on the booster alone

~75 MNTotal thrust — twice the Saturn V that went to the Moon

The Saturn V put humans on the Moon. It is literally the most famous rocket in history. Starship generates roughly twice its thrust. And unlike Saturn V — which you could only use once — every piece of Starship is designed to fly again.

2×

The thrust of Saturn V — the rocket that sent humans to the Moon in 1969

The Journey That Got Here

This didn't happen overnight. The early flights were spectacular, and not always in a good way.

April 2023 — Flight 1

Booster didn't fully separate. Vehicle tumbled. Flight termination system activated. A fireball over the Gulf of Mexico went viral before the debris hit the water.

November 2023 — Flight 2

Made it further. Ship destroyed over the Caribbean. Another explosion, more data collected. SpaceX didn't flinch.

March 2024 — Flight 3

First time both stages separated cleanly. Ship reached near-orbital velocity and made it to the Indian Ocean. SpaceX called it nominal.

October 2024 — Flight 5

The moment the world stopped: the Super Heavy booster returned to the launch tower and was caught mid-air by giant mechanical arms the engineers call Mechazilla. Nobody had ever done this before with a rocket this size.

2025–2026 — Flights 6–12

Booster catches became almost routine. Ship landings improved. Payload volume tests, propellant transfer demos, heat shield refinements. The grind of real engineering.

July 16, 2026 — Flight 13

Block 3 Starship. Booster 19. According to NASASpaceflight, potentially the final suborbital mission in the program's history.

Each explosion wasn't a setback in the traditional sense. SpaceX collects more flight data from a rapid failure than most aerospace agencies collect from a cautious success. It's a controversial philosophy — but 13 flights later, it's hard to argue with the results.

Key takeaway: SpaceX spent three years and 13 flights doing something no aerospace company has attempted at this scale: testing a fully reusable orbital-class rocket by actually flying it until it worked.

What Changes When It Goes Orbital?

Everything.

Suborbital means you go up, arc through space at the edge of Earth's atmosphere, and come back down. You never build up enough horizontal velocity to stay in orbit. The whole flight lasts maybe 10 minutes.

To reach orbit, you need to travel at roughly 7.9 km/s. That's Mach 23. Fast enough to constantly fall around the curve of the Earth rather than back onto it.

7.9 km/sOrbital velocity — Mach 23, or New York to London in under 12 minutes

150 tStarship's payload to LEO, fully reusable — 5× the Space Shuttle

Same dayTarget turnaround time — SpaceX wants to refly it like an aircraft

When Starship completes a full orbital mission and returns, it will be the first fully reusable vehicle of this scale in history. For comparison: NASA's Space Shuttle carried about 27 tonnes to orbit and cost roughly $1.5 billion per mission. Understanding how orbital mechanics work explains why that price tag was unavoidable — and why Starship's reusability changes the math entirely.

For scale: The Space Shuttle's payload bay could fit a city bus. Starship's Block 3 fairing could fit a small house. And it aims to cost a fraction of the price per kilogram.

Why This Matters Beyond SpaceX

NASA is counting on Starship. Not metaphorically. Contractually.

When the Artemis program sends astronauts back to the lunar surface, the vehicle that descends to the Moon will be a modified Starship. NASA paid SpaceX $2.9 billion for that contract. No working Starship means no Moon landing. Full stop.

$2.9B

NASA's Human Landing System contract with SpaceX — Starship is the Moon lander

But the Moon is just the first stop. Starship was designed from day one with Mars in mind. A single Starship in final configuration could carry over 100 people and 100+ tonnes of cargo to the Red Planet. Musk's stated plan involves a fleet of hundreds. The live orbital tracker already maps the infrastructure of satellites and stations that would coordinate such missions.

100+People per Mars mission in the long-range plan

Block 3Current Starship version — largest payload bay in the program's history

Booster 19Super Heavy booster flying Flight 13

What Comes Next

If Flight 13 delivers what SpaceX needs, Flight 14 is expected to attempt a full orbital trajectory. That means launching from Starbase in Texas, reaching orbital velocity, completing at least one full loop around the planet, and returning — either to a landing catch or to a controlled splashdown.

The Block 3 Starship has meaningful upgrades over earlier versions: a larger payload bay, improved heat shield tiles designed to survive the 1,600°C re-entry temperatures, and propellant transfer systems needed for the in-space refueling that lunar missions require. Each upgrade was tested on the flights that came before it. That's the point of 13 flights.

There will be skeptics. Two years of explosions gave them ammunition. But with a booster that gets caught by a tower arm mid-air and a ship that returns from near-orbital velocities, the window for reasonable doubt is narrowing.

The practice runs appear to be ending. The real missions are about to begin. Follow the story on SkyLens as it unfolds.

To be fair: Starship has not yet completed a full orbital mission. The gap between a clean suborbital test and a reliable orbital vehicle carrying actual payloads — or humans — is enormous. SpaceX has moved faster than anyone predicted, but the next phase is the hardest one. Watch this space carefully.

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SkyLens editorial — live CelesTrak + NASA/JPL data (16071 objects)