SpaceX set the SpaceX Starship Flight 13 launch for July 24 after waiving off a July 23 attempt because of weather. The company targeted a 90-minute window opening at 5:45 p.m. CDT from Texas. The reset came after a week of engine work and another round of preflight checks on Super Heavy.
Elon Musk said at least two Raptor engines needed to be removed after the hard engine stop during the earlier attempt. On July 16, on-screen telemetry data showed four engines that apparently did not ignite before the post-ignition abort. That left Booster 20 and Ship 40 in turnaround work before SpaceX brought them back together for the next launch window.
Booster 20 work at Starbase
SpaceX de-stacked Ship 40 from Booster 20 in the pre-dawn hours of July 17 and returned both to the production site at Starbase. Booster 20 then went back to Pad 2 on July 21. On July 22, SpaceX loaded it with liquid oxygen and liquid methane before draining the vehicle again, then stacked Ship 40 on top of the booster that evening.
SpaceX posted that additional preflight testing on Super Heavy was complete and that it was starting preparations to launch Starship as soon as Thursday, July 23. It also said weather was currently a significant watch item for launch. That left the schedule balanced between the repaired hardware and the same launch constraint that already pushed the attempt back one day.
Starlink V3 on Flight 13
The mission was built around a first deployment of 20 Starlink V3 satellites from Ship 40. SpaceX said the satellites would extend solar arrays and antennas, then attempt to connect with the larger Starlink constellation via high-capacity lasers. The company said they were expected to follow the same suborbital path as Starship and demise about 20 minutes after deployment.
SpaceX also planned a Raptor engine relight after the roughly 11-minute satellite deploy sequence, along with a boostback burn and splashdown test for Booster 20 in the Gulf of Mexico. The company said hardware modifications were meant to improve relight reliability and that updates to engine alarms and aborts were designed to match the multi-engine flight environment. It also said other engine improvements were aimed at avoiding the early shutdown that kept Flight 12 from demonstrating an engine relight.
July 23 weather waiver-off
SpaceX waived off the July 23 attempt because of weather, then set the next try for July 24. The launch window was due to open at 5:45 p.m. CDT, or 6:45 p.m. EDT and 2245 UTC. Whether the July 24 attempt lifted off and how Starship Flight 13 performed was not answered in the source, so the immediate watch item was the weather-delayed retry itself.
