Key Takeaways
- SpaceX delayed Starships 13th flight test to July 24 after a July 16 engine abort and weather scrub.
- SPCX shares have traded below their $135 IPO price since July 17, down nearly 23% since debut.
- Fridays window opens at 6:45 p.m. ET, with Starship set to deploy 20 Starlink V3 satellites.
Third Setback in Just Over a Week
SpaceX postponed the 13th flight test of its Starship rocket due to weather conditions, with the launch now targeted for Friday, July 24. Its the third disruption in barely a week for the vehicle Musk is counting on to eventually carry astronauts to the moon and beyond.
The trouble began on July 16, when several of Booster 20‘s Raptor engines failed to ignite in the final second of the countdown. Musk described the failure on X as an automatic launch abort triggered when some of the engines didn’t start, and engineers swapped out two of the boosters Raptors before clearing it for another attempt.
A follow-up try on July 23 also slipped, this time because ground-based cameras needed clear skies to capture detailed images of Starships heat shield tiles during ascent (data SpaceX considers essential to proving the vehicle can be reused).
Friday‘s rescheduled attempt opens a 90-minute window at 6:45 p.m. ET (5:45 p.m. local time) from the company’s Starbase facility in South Texas. If it flies, the Super Heavy booster is expected to separate, perform a boostback burn and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico, while the Starship upper stage deploys 20 Starlink V3 satellites (its first delivery of an operational payload) before attempting a controlled entry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
A Bitcoin Treasury Riding Along
For Bitcoin.com News readers, the Starship saga carries a second storyline that has nothing to do with rockets but more to do with SpaceX‘s balance sheet. Regulatory filings ahead of the company’s Nasdaq debut showed SpaceX holding 18,712 BTC, a position valued at roughly $1.29 billion in a May 20 filing tied to the companys IPO paperwork (enough to rank SpaceX among the largest corporate bitcoin holders on U.S. markets).
Sister company Tesla carries its own bitcoin treasury of 11,509 BTC, which held steady through the second quarter alongside a $112 million impairment loss booked under standard accounting rules.
Trackers listed SpaceX as the eighth-largest public company bitcoin holder at the time of its filing, well behind Strategy‘s treasury of more than 840,000 BTC but ahead of most other Nasdaq companies that have added bitcoin since 2024. Unlike Tesla, which has held its bitcoin since 2021 and books it under standard corporate accounting rules, SpaceX’s position only became public knowledge through IPO disclosure requirements.
A Rocky Nasdaq Debut
SpaceX‘s stock market performance has proven almost as turbulent as its test flights. The company priced its June 12 IPO at $135 a share, valuing SpaceX at roughly $1.75 trillion, but SPCX shares slipped below that IPO price for the first time on July 17 (the day after the failed launch attempt) and have stayed underwater since, down nearly 23% since the stock joined the Nasdaq-100. Moreover, the company’s stock is currently trading $118, over 40% lower than its all-time high of nearly $202.
Musk said after the July 16 scrub that SpaceX would try again “hopefully in a few days,” and the company has stuck close to that timeline despite the additional weather delay. A clean flight Friday would mark Starship‘s first successful deployment of an operational satellite payload, giving SpaceX’s newest shareholders, many of whom bought in above the current share price, their clearest reliability signal yet. Until then, both the rocket and the stock remain grounded below where they started.