SpaceX to begin Starship orbital flights

WASHINGTON — SpaceX plans to start deploying upgraded Starlink satellites into orbit on the next flight of its Starship vehicle, scheduled for as soon as the end of the month.

In an Aug. 4 earnings call, the first by the company since it went public nearly two months ago, SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company would deploy Starlink V3 satellites on Starship’s next launch, the vehicle’s first orbital launch attempt.

“Flight 14 will be our first flight to fly our version three Starlink satellites, our communication satellites, to operational orbit,” he said. That launch is tentatively scheduled for the end of August, he said later in the call.

He also said the company will attempt to catch the upper stage, or ship, back at the launch site on Flight 14. The company has not attempted a ship catch before, electing instead to perform soft splashdowns in the Indian Ocean. That catch, he added, is pending regulatory approval.

Musk said the plans to make Starship’s first orbital flight came after analysis of Flight 13, the most recent suborbital flight on July 24. That flight achieved most of the company’s announced milestones, including deployment of 20 functioning Starlink V3 satellites, which completed brief tests before reentering.

The ship survived both reentry and splashdown, unlike on previous flights when the vehicle exploded after tipping over in the water. The ship is still floating in the Indian Ocean, and SpaceX has sent vessels to recover it and tow it back to land.

“This flight actually went incredibly well. The heat shield appears to be very robust,” he said. “The ship is still floating in the ocean, and we expect to recover the ship and bring it back for analysis.”

“I would say things look very good, and that’s why we, assuming we receive regulatory approval to do so, will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on the next flight, which is tentatively scheduled for the end of this month,” he said.

He downplayed concerns from some about the state of Starship’s heat shield after splashdown. The ship’s tiles had an array of white streaks that some have interpreted as evidence that hot gas was able to penetrate gaps between the tiles, undermining their integrity.

“I don’t want to jinx it or anything, but I think I’d consider the heat shield problem solved at this point,” he said, adding the company wanted to inspect the ship floating in the Indian Ocean to confirm that assessment. “But I would say that we do not see any technical obstacles at this point to achieving full and rapid reusability.”

He did not address in his remarks the one setback on Flight 13, the failure to perform a controlled splashdown of the Super Heavy booster after its boostback burn ended early. It was the second consecutive flight in which the booster failed to make a controlled splashdown.

He offered a bold prediction for Starship’s future flight rate. “We expect the cadence of flights to be increasing rapidly and, probably a year from now, we will be doing at least one flight a day, possibly more,” he said. That flight rate would be more than double the 165 Falcon 9 launches SpaceX achieved in 2025, 15 years into operation of that vehicle.

Financials

The discussion of Starship was a small part of an hourlong earnings call that also touched on its Starlink connectivity service and investments in artificial intelligence.

The company reported second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion, nearly double the $4.1 billion the company had in the same quarter a year ago. The company had a net loss of $541 million in the quarter, compared with $1 billion in the second quarter of last year.

Space, the smallest of the company’s three business segments and the one that includes launch, reported $962 million in revenue in the quarter and an operating loss of $542 million. Connectivity, which includes Starlink, had $4.29 billion in revenue and operating income of $1.66 billion. SpaceX’s AI segment had $2.56 billion in revenue and an operating loss of $1.26 billion.

SpaceX said it spent $1.17 billion in capital expenditures, or capex, on space in the second quarter, primarily on Starship development, while its connectivity division had $1.37 billion in capex. Those were dwarfed by the AI division, which had $15.8 billion in capex to build computing infrastructure.

Musk projected that SpaceX would achieve ARR, or annual recurring revenue, of $100 billion by December. He added in the call that the company was moving up by a year, from 2031 to 2030, when it expected to achieve $1 trillion in annual revenue, but did not disclose the breakdown in revenue among its space, connectivity and AI divisions at that point.

While space is SpaceX’s smallest division by revenue, it is essential to its connectivity and AI businesses because it will be used to deploy Starlink and AI satellites. That includes both Starlink V3 and the next generation of direct-to-cell satellites optimized for Starship.

Musk said that the new Starlink V3 satellites will make a notable improvement in the overall Starlink service once a “critical mass” of them are in orbit. He estimated that to be “on the order of about 1,000” satellites. “Approximately second quarter next year would be, I think, when we’d get to that point.”

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