The FAA greenlit SpaceX to resume Starship flights after identifying the May booster failure cause. The next test could launch Thursday with real Starlink satellites.
By Adam Makins · 
SpaceX got the green light to fly again. The FAA cleared the company to resume Starship test flights after SpaceX and federal regulators pinpointed what went wrong during May’s launch attempt. The next flight could happen as soon as Thursday, July 16, and this time it’ll carry real third-generation Starlink satellites instead of dummy payloads.
The May 22 test flight was mostly successful. The Super Heavy booster lifted the 407-foot Starship into orbit, the upper stage separated cleanly, and the company deployed test satellites. But then things fell apart during booster recovery. The booster’s engines failed to reignite properly, and it plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico instead of executing a simulated landing.
The culprit was surprisingly specific: slight differences in engine startup timing caused the booster to rotate 90 degrees in the wrong direction at the moment of separation. It’s the kind of subtle engineering detail that cascades into mission failure.
SpaceX modified the engine startup sequence to make the booster flip more reliably. The FAA also identified “heat effects on propulsion system components” and “erroneous engine alarm system settings” as contributing factors. SpaceX has since updated both the alarm systems and abort logic to prevent similar failures.
There’s also the matter of the upper stage losing one of its three vacuum-rated Raptor engines during May’s flight. SpaceX says it’s made hardware and operational changes to prevent that from happening again.
This upcoming test represents a meaningful step up. Instead of dummy satellites, SpaceX is flying 20 actual third-generation Starlink satellites designed to boost the network’s capacity and speed. Six of them will have cameras mounted to capture exterior footage of Starship during flight.
The satellites are engineered to burn up in the atmosphere roughly 20 minutes after deployment, after linking to the larger Starlink constellation via high-capacity lasers. It’s a clever approach that lets SpaceX test real hardware without littering orbit with debris.
There’s extra weight on this test. SpaceX completed its IPO in June, raising nearly $86 billion and becoming one of the ten most valuable companies in the world. This is the company’s first test flight as a public company, meaning Wall Street and regular investors now get a front-row seat to SpaceX’s famously explosive development philosophy.
Elon Musk calls these fiery failures “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” and SpaceX’s entire development strategy depends on the market tolerating them. After going public, the company needs to demonstrate that its iterative, fail-fast approach actually works and generates progress.
Starlink remains SpaceX’s only profitable business segment heading into the public markets. That makes these third-generation satellites crucial. The V3 versions of both Starship and Starlink are essential to SpaceX’s long-term ambitions, including space-based data centers and eventual interplanetary missions.
Fully reusable rockets could transform space economics. If SpaceX can master recovering and reflying the Super Heavy booster, the economics of spaceflight change dramatically. The booster represents the most expensive part of the Starship system. Being able to land it, refuel it, and launch it again dozens of times could lower per-mission costs by orders of magnitude.
That’s why each test matters more than it might seem. Every engine reignition, every booster separation, every successful landing is a data point pushing SpaceX closer to a genuinely reusable orbital transportation system.
The fact that the FAA approved this flight so quickly after the May failure shows regulatory confidence in SpaceX’s engineering. The company identified specific problems, proposed targeted fixes, and got approval to proceed. If Thursday’s launch happens, we’ll see whether those fixes actually work under real flight conditions.
Source: TechCrunch
Success isn’t just about reaching orbit anymore; it’s about whether SpaceX can consistently do it while refining its hardware for an increasingly demanding mission profile.
