SpaceX is now aiming for the long-awaited launch of the third major version of its Starship-Super Heavy rocket no later than Tuesday, May 19. was announced on Monday, a day after completing an integrated tanking test.
The mission, called Flight 12, will not only be the first launch of what is collectively known as Starship V3, but also the first launch from Pad 2, an updated version of the launch infrastructure supporting both launch and catch capabilities. Starship V3 will also use a new version of the Raptor engine, called the Raptor 3 engine.
“The primary goal of the flight test will be to demonstrate each of these new pieces in a flight environment for the first time, with each element of the Starship architecture having significant redesigns to enable complete and rapid re-use, incorporating learnings from years of development and testing,” SpaceX said on its website.
The mission’s flight profile is similar to previous Starship test missions, in that it will be a suborbital flight. However, because of all the new elements at play, SpaceX will not attempt to capture the upper stage, called Ship 39, or the first stage, called Booster 19.
SpaceX will make a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico (referred to as the Gulf of Mexico by the US government) approximately seven minutes after liftoff on Booster 19. Meanwhile, Ship 39 will aim for its aquatic landing a little more than an hour into its mission in the Indian Ocean.
Launch rehearsal completed. During the flight-like countdown, more than 5,000 metric tons (11+ million pounds) of propellant was loaded onto fully assembled Starship and Super Heavy V3 vehicles for the first time. pic.twitter.com/e9oZlzc0yz
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) 11 May 2026
Unlike previous iterations of its Super Heavy booster, this time, SpaceX is using an integrated hot stage, which exposes the forward dome of the booster’s fuel tank during hot staging. Engineers included a non-structural steel layer that would work in conjunction with tank pressurization to help protect the liquid methane tanks from the fires of the upper stage engines.
As it did with Flight 10 and Flight 11 last year, SpaceX also intends to deploy simulator Starlink satellites from the ship’s upper stage. However, this time there will be 22 of them onboard – almost twice as many as on previous flights – two of which will have new capabilities.
“The final two satellites deployed will scan Starship’s heat shield and send imagery to operators to test ways to analyze Starship’s heat shield readiness to return to the launch site on future missions,” SpaceX said. “Several tiles on the starship have been painted white to simulate missing tiles and serve as imaging targets in the test.”
SpaceX will test a far more complete version of its heat shield with Flight 12. Unlike previous missions, during which multiple tiles were intentionally removed, this time only one is intended to be missing at the time of liftoff.
“For entry into Starship, a single heat shield tile was intentionally removed to measure the aerodynamic load difference on adjacent tiles when one tile was missing,” SpaceX said.
The twelfth flight test of Starship will involve the next generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles, powered by the next evolution of the Raptor engine and launching from a newly designed pad at the starbase. Launch targeted for Tuesday, May 19 → https://t.co/2gZQUxS6mm pic.twitter.com/JxmpL2WE4w
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) 12 May 2026
The Raptor engines also underwent significant upgrades since their last flight, offering improved performance.
“Raptor 3 engines provide increased thrust, with sea-level variants now producing 250 tf (551,000 lbf) up from 230 tf (507,000 lbf), while vacuum engines producing 275 tf (606,000 lbf) increased from 258 tf (568,000 lbf),” SpaceX said. Are.” “Sensors and controllers are now internally integrated and the engines are covered by thermal protection, eliminating the need for separate engine shrouds on both Starship and Super Heavy. All engine variants will now also feature a redesigned ignition system.
“Raptor’s sea-level engine mass has been reduced from 1,630 kg to 1,525 kg. Overall vehicle-level mass savings through engine simplification, vehicle-side commodity and supporting hardware reach approximately 1 ton per engine.”
The launch of Starship V3 is a long time coming and will be critical to NASA’s plans to return humans to the Moon. This iteration of the rocket will eventually demonstrate propellant transfer capabilities, which will be needed to support the flights of the Human Landing System iteration of the rocket.
Both Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mk.2 have designed mission architectures that require multiple launches and the transfer of fuel from a tanker to their respective landers. This kind of propellant transfer has never been done before in space.
“That first prop transfer flight for SpaceX is going to be really important for us and we look forward to seeing it and getting some real great data from it,” said Tom Percy, NASA’s HLS systems engineering and integration manager, based at Marshall Space Flight Center. He spoke to Spaceflight Now ahead of the launch of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission in April.
“I think as a long-term approach to space exploration, more importantly to me, we know that multi-launch architectures are going to become a common thing for deep space exploration. And so all the things that both providers (both SpaceX and Blue Origin) are doing to manage the development and understand how to coordinate multiple launches to be able to build these larger exploration systems is going to help us not only for the Moon, but also for Mars and beyond.”
