SpaceX is gearing up for Starship's 13th test flight later this week

This flight will put Starship under higher pressure and test out new Starlink satellites in orbit.

The next test flight of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster could take off as soon as Thursday, and much of the hour-long mission will look a lot like the last Starship flight in May. But there are a few key differences for this launch, set to occur during a launch window that opens at 5:45 pm CDT (22:45 UTC) on Thursday. The most notable change is the inclusion of real, functioning Starlink satellites inside Starship’s cargo bay.

SpaceX previously tested the ship’s payload deployment mechanism using simulators mimicking the mass and dimensions of the company’s next-generation Starlink Version 3 broadband satellites. This time—Starship’s 13th full-scale test flight and the second to use SpaceX’s newest version of Starship—technicians have installed 20 Starlink V3 satellites into the ship’s deployer, a system of pulleys and cables designed to eject a stack of satellites one at a time through an opening on the side of the spacecraft. The satellites will not be part of SpaceX’s operational network, but engineers will attempt to briefly establish laser communication links between the Starlink V3s and other spacecraft flying in low-Earth orbit.

If successful, these links will validate Starlink V3’s interoperability with SpaceX’s previous generation of Starlink satellites. As with all of SpaceX’s previous Starship test flights, the more than 400-foot-tall rocket will fly on a long suborbital trajectory arcing halfway around the world from the launch site at Starbase, Texas, to a predetermined location in the Indian Ocean. The flight of Starship and the 20 Starlink satellites will last a little more than an hour before they fall back into the atmosphere.

The ship will target a controlled splashdown northwest of Australia, while the Starlink satellites will burn up during reentry. A new ingredient The flight plan for this week’s mission has just enough time in space for the Starlink satellites to extend their solar arrays and antennas. The satellites will also attempt to connect with ground stations in South Africa as they soar nearly more than 100 miles overhead.