We simply obtained a tremendous new view of SpaceX’s Starship car, because of one of many firm’s next-gen Starlink satellites.
Starship, the most important and strongest rocket ever constructed, launched on its thirteenth check flight from South Texas final Friday (July 24). The suborbital jaunt was related in lots of respects to previous Starship check missions, with one massive exception: This time, the car deployed a batch of purposeful, next-gen Starlink web satellites into area.
Six of these “Starlink V3” spacecraft carried cameras, in order that SpaceX might get good views of the warmth defend on Starship’s higher stage, which is called Starship, or just Ship. The satellites did that job and extra, capturing superb views of Ship because it cruised away from them excessive above Earth.
View of Starship in area from a Starlink V3 satellite tv for pc on Flight 13.This composite is made of images from 4 separate cameras on a single satellite tv for pc. Six of the satellites have been outfitted with cameras to scan Starship’s warmth defend and transmit imagery all the way down to operators to… pic.twitter.com/sNTHHz5vLrJuly 31, 2026
SpaceX shared one such view on X Friday night (July 31) — a 65-second video that stitches collectively imagery taken by 4 completely different cameras on a single Starlink V3 satellite tv for pc.
The video begins with an up-close view of the shiny, 171-foot-tall (52 meters) Ship. We see extra of the car because the footage rolls and the 2 spacecraft get farther and farther aside. Towards the tip, we see Ship in its entirety, and we get a way of its exercise; three of its six Raptor engines are firing, and small puffs of white vapor point out that the car is partaking its fine-tuning response management thrusters.
Like all Starship check missions thus far, Flight 13 focused a suborbital trajectory. So the 20 Starlink V3 satellites, the primary ever to succeed in area, didn’t wait for lengthy; they got here again all the way down to Earth about 20 minutes after deploying into the ultimate frontier.
Their successors will get larger — and there can be lots of them. In accordance with a submitting with the U.S. Federal Communications Fee, SpaceX needs to function a megaconstellation of 100,000 Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship can be key to constructing and sustaining this constellation, which would require many launches of the brawny, totally reusable rocket. (SpaceX presently operates a constellation of practically 11,000 Starlink satellites, however these V2 craft are significantly smaller than the 4,400-pound V3 iteration.)
Ship appears to have checked all of its containers on Flight 13. After deploying the satellites and efficiently reigniting considered one of its Raptors in area, it splashed down on track within the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia about 65 minutes after liftoff.
The car survived its harrowing return journey by means of Earth’s ambiance in a single piece and stays intact at present, so far as we all know; SpaceX just lately shared a photograph of the car bobbing within the Indian Ocean 5 days after splashdown.
However Starship’s large first-stage booster, often known as Tremendous Heavy, had a couple of points on Flight 13. Its touchdown burn employed solely 5 of a deliberate 13 Raptor engines, for instance, and the booster hit the waters of the Gulf of Mexico at the next velocity than meant. (Tremendous Heavy has a complete of 33 Raptors, all of which hearth at liftoff.)
Starship stays within the growth section, however SpaceX needs to get the megarocket operational quickly. It is slated to fly on NASA’s Artemis III astronaut mission to low Earth orbit in mid-2027 and to land a crew close to the moon’s south pole on Artemis IV in late 2028.
