Culture · Polymarket ·July 16, 2026 ·Edited by Samuel Jo

SpaceX readies Starship Flight 13 with first V3 Starlink satellites

SpaceX has stacked the two stages of its Starship rocket at the Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, ahead of the Flight 13 test launch scheduled for the evening of July 16. The mission marks the first time the company will send its upgraded V3 Starlink satellites to space aboard Starship, a significant step in SpaceX's plan to deploy its next-generation broadband constellation using its own fully reusable launch vehicle. Multiple outlets report the flight is set for today, with Ars Technica, The Register, and SpaceNews all confirming the mid-July target. Spectrum News 13 notes the launch will also test new modifications to the vehicle. Traders put the chance of the flight occurring by August 31 at 98%, with those odds having climbed +8.6 pts over the past week, aligning with the steady progress visible at the pad. The past day's +0.5 pts shift suggests little last-minute uncertainty among market participants even as final preparations continue.

Background

Starship is SpaceX's fully reusable, two-stage launch vehicle consisting of the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage, designed ultimately for lunar and Mars missions as well as high-cadence satellite deployment. Flight 13 follows a series of increasingly ambitious test launches from Boca Chica, each refining the vehicle's launch, stage separation, and recovery capabilities. The V3 Starlink satellites represent the third major iteration of SpaceX's broadband constellation spacecraft, engineered for greater capacity than earlier versions. Deploying them via Starship rather than the workhorse Falcon 9 would demonstrate the rocket's capability as an operational satellite launcher, not merely a test article. The specific question this market resolves on is whether the Flight 13 test occurs by August 31.

The precedent

• SpaceX conducted the first integrated Starship flight test in April 2023, which ended in a mid-air explosion over the Gulf of Mexico.
• Starship's first successful orbital-class flight with intact splashdowns of both stages occurred in June 2024 on Flight 4.

Context compiled by Crowdtells from the public record — verify before relying on it.

What to watch

The Flight 13 launch window opens the evening of July 16 from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Watch for a successful stage separation, the deployment of the V3 Starlink satellites, and any recovery attempts for the Super Heavy booster. A scrub or abort would push the timeline later into the July–August window, while a clean flight would confirm the vehicle's growing operational maturity.

AI-written briefing grounded in 5 sources and the live market, edited by Samuel Jo. Odds are crowd probabilities, not advice — how this works.