On Friday, May 22, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. CT, Starship lifted off from Starbase, Texas on its twelfth flight test. This was the first flight of the Starship and Super Heavy V3 vehicles, the Raptor 3 engines, the first flight from Pad 2, and the first Starship flight to deploy modified Starlink satellites to image Starship in space.
The flight test began with Super Heavy igniting all 33 Raptor 3 engines and ascending over the Gulf of America. A single Raptor engine shut down during ascent. The successful first-stage ascent was followed by a hot-staging maneuver, with Starship’s upper stage igniting its six Raptor engines to continue its flight to space.
Following stage separation, the Super Heavy booster performed a directional flip maneuver and attempted its boostback burn. It was unable to light all planned engines and performed a partial boostback burn that ended early. Super Heavy attempted to reignite its engines for the landing burn before experiencing a hard splashdown in the Gulf of America.
During its ascent burn to space, Starship lost one of the Raptor 3 vacuum engines but demonstrated its engine-out capability and achieved its planned trajectory.
During coast, Starship successfully deployed all 20 Starlink simulators and two modified Starlink satellites that imaged Starship in space. These simulators and modified Starlink satellites were on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship.
Starship re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and was able to gather critical data on the performance of its heatshield and structural strength. In the final minutes of flight, Starship performed a maneuver to intentionally stress the structural limits of the vehicle’s rear flaps and a dynamic banking move to mimic the trajectory that future missions returning to Starbase will fly. Starship then guided itself using its four flaps to the pre-planned splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean, and executed a landing flip, landing burn, and splashdown on two Raptor engines.
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FLIGHT TEST TIMELINE
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