By Micah Maidenberg
SpaceX is preparing to launch a new version of its Starship rocket a day after officially kicking off its IPO process.
The Elon Musk-led company is targeting a Thursday evening liftoff from its Starbase complex outside of Brownsville, Texas. The test mission is set to debut Starship "V3," featuring upgrades designed to prepare for bigger satellites and, one day, potentially settling Mars and mining asteroids.
Starship, bigger and more powerful than any rocket ever built, is central to Musk's vision for SpaceX's future and his deeper-space dreams. The rocket hasn't flown any customer satellites yet after intense flight tests and technical setbacks, and is consuming a huge amount of investment.
The company has sketched out a future in which Starship is flying thousands of times a year, regularly deploying satellites and other payloads for customers and SpaceX's own Starlink internet division.
SpaceX's growth plans depend on Starship, according to its initial public offering prospectus. The document, filed Wednesday, listed Starship first among the risk factors facing the company.
"Their execution record is unsurpassed, but this is hard stuff to get right," said Daniel Hanson, a senior portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman who oversees a fund that owns SpaceX shares. "This team, in due course, will execute on Starship, and that will unlock tremendous value."
SpaceX estimated in its IPO filing Wednesday that it has spent $15 billion developing Starship, including $3 billion in 2025 alone. Those efforts have weighed on SpaceX's bottom line, with its space division reporting a $662 million loss for the three months ended March 31. The company said the loss was primarily driven by stepped-up investment in development and related infrastructure for the rocket.
The Texas-based company said it expects to spend more on research and development this year as it keeps working on the vehicle, approximately 80% of which it manufactures in-house.
Wins and losses
The rocket's track record has been mixed through 11 launches over the past three years. SpaceX has been able to deploy loads of dummy satellites and recapture the booster in massive "chopsticks," critical to making Starship quickly reusable.
Other tests have ended in explosions, including one last June that shook homes miles away. Another failure early last year threatened commercial airline traffic above the Caribbean region, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
The new version of Starship includes upgrades to the fuel transfer tube that moves propellant to the booster's 33 engines, redesigned so engines can simultaneously and more quickly begin firing. The engines, called Raptors, are expected to produce more thrust while weighing less, according to the company.
"Almost every part of Starship V3 is different from V2," Musk said in a social-media post Sunday.
The flight window for Thursday's mission is set to open at 6:30 p.m. ET. Like previous tests, the company plans to launch the Starship spacecraft on an easterly trajectory during a roughly hourlong flight.
The company expects to deploy 20 Starlink simulators during the mission, and stress-test tiles designed to protect the craft as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere from space.
SpaceX plans to start using Starship to deploy Starlink satellites in the second half of this year, with each flight able to deploy up to 60, according to Wednesday's filing. The new version of Starship is designed to carry 100 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, compared with about 23 metric tons for the company's workhorse Falcon 9 vehicle.
Getting Starship running regularly and reliably will eventually enable SpaceX to reduce the cost of reaching orbit by 99% or more compared with historical average costs, the company said in the filing.
Long road ahead
SpaceX also aspires to refuel Starships in orbit, which would unlock the potential for many of the company's -- and Musk's -- more far-flung goals. "In-orbit refueling is complex, and we have not yet demonstrated or attempted it," the company said in the filing.
Musk, known for setting ambitious timelines for SpaceX, thought Starship would be flying operational missions years ago, and staff at the company in 2025 were pushing to try to ready the vehicle for a potential launch to Mars this year.
A flight to the red planet now isn't expected to happen in 2026, and the rocket still has many hurdles ahead of it.
NASA is counting on a version of Starship to be ready for a major demonstration mission next year, an operation that would help pave the way for a potential moon landing in 2028.
In the IPO filing, SpaceX touted other ideas for Starship, including a plan to compete with long-haul flights by using the rocket to transport passengers and cargo around the globe at rapid speeds. The company struck an agreement with the Air Force a few years ago to investigate the concept for the military.
Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 21, 2026 12:00 ET (16:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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