By George Glover and Al Root
SpaceX launched its huge Starship on Friday, weeks ahead of the company's massive initial public offering.
Lift-off occurred just after 6:30 p.m. Eastern time. It was the 12th Starship test and used the third version of the Starship, which stands some 408 feet tall, with the booster and upper stage stacked on top of one another. The booster has 33 rocket engines, which together produce more than 8,000 tons of thrust.
During Starship's takeoff, the booster splashed down off the coast of Texas. It wasn't recovered, as SpaceX expected. The upper stage, meanwhile, had several test objectives, including cargo deployment and heat shield development.
The launch can be re-watched here.
The upper stage had some engine issues, but reached its desired orbit at about 6:45 p.m. Eastern time, traveling at more than 26,000 miles per hour and about 100 miles above the Earth. The dummy satellites were deployed shortly after that; 22 went out Starship's door, in a Pez dispenser-esque effect. The final two satellites were fitted with cameras to offer space-based views of the ship.
SpaceX was forced to scrub a launch attempt on Thursday. "The hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place did not retract," SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote in a post on X.
To be sure, an aborted launch wasn't all that surprising. Creating reliable space technology isn't easy, which is one reason SpaceX has a huge competitive moat. It already handles more than half of the world's orbital launches with its Falcon 9 rocket.
There are development deadlines, though. Starship is involved with NASA's Artemis missions, which aim to establish a permanent American presence on the moon. Starship has Artemis work to do in 2027.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman attended the Starship launch on Friday.
The importance of Starship can't be overstated for SpaceX, which is planning to raise record amounts of money in a June IPO, which could value SpaceX at north of $2 trillion. The spaceship is designed to cut the cost of reaching orbit by 90% or more. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has already cut the cost of reaching space by 95% relative to the space shuttle.
Lower costs enable new applications such as orbital AI data centers. CEO Elon Musk believes orbital computing will be cost-competitive with Earth-based computing in a few years. Operating in space is difficult, but there won't be a power bill paid to a utility.
Some of that reduced cost boils down to reusability. Starship is designed to be fully reusable, with both the upper and lower stages capable of multiple missions. SpaceX, of course, pioneered reusable rockets, but only the lower stage of the Falcon 9 is reused.
More than one million people were watching the test on Thursday ahead of the scrub. More than 800,000 watched Friday's satellite deployment. The long weekend might have had an impact -- but that's still an impressive number. Starship tests are a big deal for space enthusiasts and for investors.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 22, 2026 19:25 ET (23:25 GMT)
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