SpaceX Static-Fires Ship 40 as Starship Flight 13 Nears

BOCA CHICA, Texas — SpaceX moved another piece into place for its next orbital attempt on Friday, static-firing Ship 40, the upper stage slated to fly Starship Flight 13. The company posted video of the test on X, showing a full-duration burn of one of the vehicle's central Raptor 3 engines that lasted roughly 15 seconds at the Massey's test site near Starbase.

The single-engine firing is one of a series of checkouts SpaceX runs before committing a vehicle to flight, and by all appearances it went exactly as designed. Crews will now work through the remaining engine tests and integration steps as the Block 3 stack — pairing Ship 40 with Booster 20 — is readied for a launch currently targeted for late July from Pad B.

A Methodical March to the Pad

Ship 40 was rolled to Massey's earlier in the week, joining Booster 20, which has already begun its own cryogenic proof campaign to verify the structural integrity of its liquid oxygen and methane tanks under extreme cold. Running the two stages through testing in parallel keeps the program on a tight cadence, and the latest static fire suggests the hardware is holding up well. SpaceX has framed Flight 13 as a repeat suborbital profile that builds directly on the data gathered from Flight 12 in May, a deliberate step-by-step approach that has defined the wider Starship Flight 13 campaign.

Raptor 3 sits at the heart of that progress. The engine is simpler, lighter and more powerful than the versions that came before it, with much of its plumbing integrated directly into the engine to cut part count and improve reusability. Friday's clean 15-second burn is exactly the kind of routine, undramatic result SpaceX wants to see as it works toward flying — and recovering — these vehicles on a regular schedule.

Why Flight 13 Matters

Each successful Starship test feeds a much larger ambition. A fully reusable super-heavy vehicle is the foundation for everything from rapid Starlink deployment to crewed lunar landings, and increasingly for orbital computing concepts such as the company's recently confirmed Starmind orbital AI constellation. The more flights SpaceX logs, the faster it retires risk on the systems those missions depend on.

The pace also stands out. While legacy programs measure progress in years, SpaceX measures it in weeks — rolling vehicles to the stand, firing engines, gathering data and iterating. NASASpaceflight has been tracking the Booster 20 and Ship 40 test sequence closely, and the cadence on display this week reinforces just how quickly Starbase can turn hardware around.

Looking Ahead

With Friday's static fire complete, attention now turns to the remaining engine checkouts and the eventual stacking of Ship 40 atop Booster 20. If the campaign continues on its current trajectory, SpaceX could be counting down to Flight 13 by late July — another data-rich step toward making the most powerful rocket ever built fully operational. For a company that treats every test as a lesson rather than a verdict, the quiet success of a 15-second burn is precisely the point.