1 hour ago
The Starlink satellites will pain up successful nan ambiance 20 minutes later.
SpaceX
Starship has taken off for its 13th trial flight aft a mates of delays owed to unfavorable upwind conditions. This is nan first Starship formation to transportation SpaceX's next-generation V3 Starlink satellites, which were designed to supply meaningful increases to its service's performance. The institution says they tin support up to 1 Tbps of downlink, 10 times much than what nan V2 satellites are tin of, and 160 Gbps of uplink that represents an summation of 22 times from V2.
While Starship will deploy 20 satellites this flight, Starlink customers won't beryllium emotion those improvements yet. This is conscionable a trial formation for nan satellites, which will widen their star arrays and antennas to cheque if they tin link pinch nan remainder of nan Starlink constellation utilizing their high-capacity lasers. These satellites will stay successful suborbital space, successful nan aforesaid altitude and trajectory arsenic Starship, and are expected to re-enter nan ambiance and pain up simply 20 minutes aft they get deployed.
Since Starship itself is besides still nether testing, SpaceX modified 2 of nan Starlink satellites. It added cameras that would alteration them to scan Starship's power shield and past transmit images to nan crushed for analysis, arsenic portion of nan institution efforts to guarantee that it's fresh for much flights.
This is nan 2nd motorboat for SpaceX's V3 Starship model, which debuted during nan heavy-lift motorboat vehicle's 12th formation test successful May. It will person beautiful overmuch nan aforesaid goals arsenic nan erstwhile flight, each meant cod information truthful that SpaceX tin "continue loop towards a afloat and quickly reusable design."
Watch Starship's thirteenth formation trial https://t.co/qkYYJiX24h
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 23, 2026
