Finally! SpaceX flew the thirteenth integrated test of Starship on 24 July from Starbase, Texas, closing out a campaign that had been stalled for more than a week and delivering the program's cleanest booster performance since the V3 vehicle began flying.

Booster 20 and Ship 40 flew the second flight of the redesigned V3 configuration, which stands more than 120 meters tall fully stacked and roughly 9 meters in diameter, making it the largest and most powerful Starship yet. And, of course, still still the largest and most powerful rocket of all time.

The flight had been a long time coming. The initial attempt on 16 July aborted automatically at T-0 after four of Booster 20's 33 Raptor engines failed to reach acceptable start parameters. SpaceX traced the fault to the engines' liquid-oxygen turbopumps, where accumulated moisture froze on contact with cryogenic propellant and produced an off-nominal spin response across six units.

Affected engines were swapped and re-tested on the pad on 22 July. A second attempt on 23 July was scrubbed for weather tied to Tropical Storm Bertha, pushing the launch to Friday.

When it finally flew, Super Heavy delivered. All 33 Raptors lit for a clean ascent, and the booster executed a hot-stage separation roughly two minutes in, followed by the flip and boostback burn that had defeated Booster 19 on Flight 12.

That earlier vehicle lost engines after separation and tumbled into the Gulf; this time the maneuver was clean. The one blemish came at the end: Only about five of the planned 13 engines appeared to light for the landing burn, and the booster hit the water faster than intended. The splashdown was still kind of controlled. Roughly six minutes after liftoff, and SpaceX had always planned to expend this booster offshore rather than attempt a tower catch.

Ship 40 flew a suborbital profile toward the Indian Ocean near Australia. Its six engines carried it through ascent without obvious issue, and it reignited a single engine in space to rehearse a maneuver needed for future orbital missions. Reentry was clean, and the vehicle executed what SpaceX called its softest splashdown to date, tipping gently onto the water intact after a flight of roughly 65 minutes.

The mission also carried the first live Starlink V3 satellites, 20 of them, deployed from Ship's payload bay in place of the mass simulators flown previously; several relayed camera imagery of the heat shield back to operators. Can't wait for flight 14!