{"id":454956,"date":"2026-05-22T18:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T18:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/454956\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T18:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T18:12:14","slug":"how-to-watch-spacex-launch-its-1st-starship-v3-megarocket-on-may-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/454956\/","title":{"rendered":"How to watch SpaceX launch its 1st Starship V3 megarocket on May 22"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watch live! SpaceX launches Starship V3 megarocket for first time – YouTube
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Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Update for May 22, 10 am ET: SpaceX will make a second attempt to launch its new Starship V3 megarocket today at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT) during a 90-minute launch window at its Starbase, Texas test site. You’ll be able to watch it live<\/a> starting at 5:45 p.m. EDT (2145 GMT). See our latest Starship V3 launch updates<\/a><\/p>\n

SpaceX’s new “V3” Starship megarocket will fly for the first time ever today (May 22), and you can watch the highly anticipated action live.<\/p>\n

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Starship<\/a> Version 3 \u2014 the biggest and most powerful iteration<\/a> of the vehicle yet \u2014 is scheduled to debut Thursday<\/a> with a suborbital test flight that lifts off from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas. An attempt to launch Starship on Thursday was called off due to a stuck pad hydraulic pin<\/a>, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Launch will occur during a 90-minute window that opens at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT; 5:30 p.m. local Texas time). You can watch it live here at Space.com courtesy of SpaceX<\/a>, or directly via the company’s website<\/a>; coverage will start about 45 minutes before liftoff. You can follow the launch live with our SpaceX Starship V3 Flight 12 launch updates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though this will the first flight for V3, it will be the 12th overall for Starship. The giant rocket first launched in April 2023<\/a> on a suborbital test mission that ended in an explosion not long after liftoff.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has made considerable progress since then. For example, the most recent two Starship missions \u2014 Flight 10<\/a> and Flight 11,<\/a> which launched in August and October of last year, respectively \u2014 were completely successful, according to the company.<\/p>\n

On both flights, Starship’s Super Heavy booster steered itself to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The rocket’s upper stage, known as “Ship,” successfully deployed payloads (eight dummy Starlink<\/a> satellites in each case) and made a splashdown of its own in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia.<\/p>\n

\"Space\"<\/p>\n

The goals are broadly the same for Flight 12, with a few twists. For instance, this time, Ship will aim to deploy 20 dummy Starlink craft as well as two “specially modified” real Starlink satellites.<\/p>\n

“The two modified satellites will test hardware planned for Starlink V3 and will attempt to scan Starship’s heat shield<\/a> and transmit imagery down to operators to test methods of analyzing Starship’s heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions,” SpaceX wrote in a Flight 12 mission description<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The entire suborbital test will take a little over an hour, if all goes to plan. Super Heavy’s splashdown will occur about seven minutes after liftoff, with Ship following suit 58 minutes later.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

There’s a lot riding on Flight 12<\/a>, and not just because it will be the first Starship launch in more than seven months. SpaceX is developing the giant vehicle to help humanity settle the moon and Mars<\/a>, among other tasks, and V3 is the first Starship iteration capable of making such trips.<\/p>\n

So SpaceX is doubtless keen to see how the vehicle flies. And so is NASA, which picked Starship to be one of the two crewed landers for its Artemis program<\/a> of moon exploration.<\/p>\n

If all goes well with Flight 12 and subsequent test missions, Starship could launch on the Artemis 3<\/a> docking test in Earth orbit late next year, and then land astronauts near the lunar south pole on Artemis 4<\/a> in 2028. Or, those honors could go to Blue Origin’s Blue Moon<\/a>, the other private lander in the Artemis stable.<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: This story was updated on May 22, 2026 to reflect SpaceX’s Starship V3 launch delay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Watch live! SpaceX launches Starship V3 megarocket for first time – YouTube Watch On Update for May 22,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-454956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}