SpaceX completes fueling test, setting stage for first launch of Starship V3
May 12, 2026
SpaceX cleared an important milestone Monday on the road to launching a new version of Starship.
Credit:
SpaceX
For the third time in three years, SpaceX has stacked a new version of its enormous Starship rocket on a launch pad in South Texas, just a few miles north of the US-Mexico border. The newest-generation Starship, known as Starship Version 3, is taller and more powerful than the ones that came before it.
The upgrades on Starship are numerous. Perhaps the most notable changes are higher-thrust, more efficient Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, a new reusable lattice-like structure at the top of the booster for hot staging, and three—not four—modified grid fins to help bring the first stage back to Earth for recovery and reuse.
If all goes according to plan, this is the version of Starship that SpaceX will use to begin experimenting with in-orbit refueling, a capability engineers must master before sending ships anywhere farther than low-Earth orbit. In the near-term, refueling will enable Starships to fly to the Moon to serve as landers for NASA’s Artemis program. Starship remains an iterative development program, and new versions are in the pipeline, but Starship V3 should mark a step toward SpaceX actually using Starships in space, rather than solely proving they can get there and get home.
But SpaceX must first do just that with Starship V3. The company has not officially announced a target launch date. Airspace and maritime warning notices released in the last few days suggested the upgraded rocket could lift off as soon as Friday evening from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site on the Gulf Coast east of Brownsville, Texas, but that was before a day-and-a-half delay in launch preps over the weekend.
A fresh set of maritime warnings issued late Monday indicated SpaceX is now targeting a launch attempt on Tuesday, May 19.
Final steps
Ground crews at Starbase lifted the Starship upper stage atop its Super Heavy booster Saturday, assembling a fully stacked Starship V3 for the first time. The rocket has a height of 408 feet (124 meters), a few feet taller than the previous version of Starship.
On Monday, SpaceX’s launch team loaded more than 11 million pounds (more than 5,000 metric tons) of super-cold methane and liquid oxygen into both stages of the rocket after halting a previous fueling attempt Saturday night due to a technical issue. The launch rehearsal followed a test-firing of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines at the launch site on May 6, the first time SpaceX ignited a full complement of uprated Raptor 3s.
At liftoff, the rocket is expected to produce some 18 million pounds of thrust, about 10 percent more than the previous generation of Super Heavy boosters, according to specifications previously released by SpaceX. The scale is staggering. For example, in Version 3, the internal transfer tube that channels methane fuel from the top of the booster to the engine compartment is about the same size as the first stage of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which is roughly 12 feet (3.7 meters) in diameter.
The upcoming flight will also mark the first liftoff from a new launch pad at Starbase, about 1,000 feet (300 meters) west of the departure point for all of SpaceX’s past Starship test flights. This will be the 12th full-scale Starship test flight, and the first since last October, after delays in readying V3 for its first launch.
Like most prior Starship flights, the upper stage of the rocket will target a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean a little more than an hour into the mission. On future flights of Starship V3, SpaceX will attempt to bring the ship back to Starbase for a catch by the launch tower’s mechanical arms, as the company has already demonstrated with the rocket’s massive Super Heavy booster.
One change SpaceX is introducing on this launch is a more southerly flight path over the Gulf of Mexico, taking the rocket between the northeastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba, instead of over the Florida Straits.
What’s left before Starship V3 is ready to fly? On the SpaceX side, workers must install hardware for the rocket’s self-destruct system, pyrotechnics that would blow up the vehicle if it deviated from its flight plan. This will require the removal of the ship from the booster. A launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration is still pending.
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