SpaceX Scrubs Starship Flight 12, Reschedules as IPO Filing Looms Over Launch

SpaceX scrubbed the 12th test flight of its Starship rocket Thursday evening and rescheduled the attempt for Friday, one day after the company filed its IPO prospectus with federal regulators.

A 90-minute launch window opened at 6:30 p.m. ET Thursday at SpaceX's facility in Starbase, Texas — the official company town formerly known as Boca Chica. During a livestream, SpaceX video hosts said the company "got the vehicle totally loaded" before calling off the attempt.

The rescheduled flight will mark the debut of Starship V3, the latest iteration of the rocket. According to SpaceX's IPO prospectus, the vehicle "is designed to deliver 100 metric tons to Earth's orbit in a fully reusable configuration while enabling rapid turnaround times akin to commercial aviation."

Starship V3 stands 408 feet tall when fully stacked and features new engines producing 18 million pounds of thrust. The company is carrying mock Starlink satellites during the test flight, but no astronauts or other operational cargo.

The launch would take place from a newly designed pad at Starbase, the first time a Starship has lifted off from that location.

SpaceX has spent more than $15 billion on the Starship program, according to the prospectus filed Wednesday. The company has characterized Starship as central to its long-term commercial ambitions, stating in the filing that its "growth strategy depends on our ability to increase our launch cadence and payload capacity, which is dependent on the successful development of Starship at scale."

The rocket is also positioned as a faster path to building out SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation, which currently relies on the older Falcon 9 vehicle. Starlink — the wireless internet unit that serves consumers, businesses, and government agencies — generated sales of $11.4 billion and operating income of $4.4 billion in 2025, accounting for 61% of the company's total revenue last year and 69% in the first quarter of this year.

By contrast, SpaceX's space segment recorded revenue of $4.1 billion and an operating loss of $657 million last year, underscoring how heavily the company's profitability depends on Starlink rather than its launch operations.

NASA is also counting on Starship to serve as the lunar lander for its Artemis IV mission, currently scheduled for early 2028, which would mark the first U.S. crewed lunar landing in more than half a century.

The timing of the test flight carries symbolic weight. It represents what many analysts consider the company's final opportunity to demonstrate Starship's capabilities to prospective public investors before shares reach the market. With the IPO prospectus already in hand, the outcome of Friday's launch will be closely watched as a signal of where the program stands heading into its public debut.

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