Elon Musk’s SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) will attempt to launch Starship on Thursday evening, carrying a payload of satellites too large for any of its other rockets.

The highly anticipated test is the first flight since shares broke below their IPO price this week.

The 90-minute launch window opens at 6:45 p.m. ET at Starbase in South Texas. Starship stands more than 400 feet tall, and its Super Heavy booster will ignite 33 Raptor engines at liftoff, making it the most powerful rocket ever flown.

The Satellites Only Starship Can Carry

Flight 13 will carry the first functional Starlink V3 satellites. Each one reportedly weighs up to 2,000 kilograms, stretches about 7 meters, and can move 1 terabit per second, roughly ten times the bandwidth of the current generation.

They are physically too large for a Falcon 9 fairing. That makes Starship the only vehicle capable of deploying them, and V3 deployment is central to the growth story SpaceX pitched investors in its prospectus.

The satellites will briefly connect to the Starlink network through laser links before deliberately reentering and burning up about 20 minutes after deployment.

Six of the 20 satellites are fitted with cameras pointed back at Starship’s heat shield. Engineers reportedly painted several tiles white to simulate missing tiles, giving the cameras targets to test in-flight damage inspection.

One Engine Relight Could Unlock Orbit

The flight’s biggest test may be relighting a single Raptor engine in space. Starship must prove it can restart an engine mid-flight before SpaceX can attempt orbit, an early step toward the $4 billion in NASA contracts that call for Starship to land astronauts on the moon as soon as 2028.

On May’s flight, engine startup differences on the upper stage knocked the booster’s flip off by roughly 90 degrees, and five of the booster’s 33 engines then failed to relight.

The mishap grounded the program until the FAA closed its investigation.

“Starship becoming operational is the critical path to the SpaceX investment thesis,” Raymond James analyst Brian Gesuale wrote this week.

What Traders Are Watching

While analysts focus on the long-term operational timeline, traders are placing bets on the immediate execution.

On Polymarket, traders give a 72% chance that Starship makes a controlled splashdown today, and an 87% chance the Super Heavy booster explodes, a market whose rules count even planned destruction.

A separate market on how many Starship launches reach space in 2026 has five or six as the favorite at 56%, with fewer than five next at 12%.

SpaceX shares closed Wednesday at $135.24, down roughly 40% from their June high.

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