On May 22, 2026, SpaceX flew the first Version 3 of Starship — the biggest and most powerful iteration yet, standing about 124 metres (408 ft) tall — on Flight 12. The vehicle reached space, released 20 mock Starlink satellites, and came down under control in the Indian Ocean. The next flight, Flight 13, is already scheduled for July 15.
A bigger, hotter Starship
Starship V3 is the first version built around SpaceX’s new Raptor 3 engine — lighter, simpler and more powerful than the Raptors that came before. Fully stacked on its Super Heavy booster, Starship remains the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, dwarfing even the Saturn V that launched Apollo. The full story of how it works sits in our Rockets & Launch Vehicles guide and the Starship encyclopedia entry.
What Flight 12 achieved — and what it didn’t
The mission cleared several firsts for the new design: it flew halfway around the world, deployed its 20 dummy Starlinks, and splashed down upright before toppling over and igniting, as expected for an ocean landing. It was not flawless — not every engine lit as the booster attempted its controlled return, and the ship pressed on with fewer engines than planned. For SpaceX, that is the point: each flight is a test, flown to failure where necessary to learn fast and fix faster.
Why it matters
Starship is not just a record-breaker. A variant of it — Starship HLS — is the lander NASA is counting on to put astronauts back on the Moon during Artemis III, and SpaceX intends the fully reusable vehicle to eventually carry cargo and crew to Mars. Getting V3 flying reliably is the gate everything else passes through, which is why Flight 13 follows barely seven weeks behind.
Image: Starship flight-test liftoff by Shujianyang, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
See how Starship stacks up against every major launch vehicle in our Rockets & Launch Vehicles guide, or read the How Rockets Work explainer.