FAA closes Starship Flight 12 mishap investigation, clears Flight 13
The FAA closed its investigation into May's Starship booster failure and cleared SpaceX for Flight 13 as soon as July 16.
what happened
The FAA closed its mishap investigation into the May Starship Flight 12 test, in which the Super Heavy booster failed to complete a controlled splashdown after five of its 33 Raptor engines did not reignite for the landing burn, per TechCrunch and Reuters. The investigation found heat effects on propulsion system components and erroneous engine alarm settings as the most probable causes; SpaceX made hardware and software changes to the engine startup sequence and the alarm and abort systems in response. The FAA said there were no reports of public injury or property damage. SpaceX is targeting Starship Flight 13, its first to carry functional Starlink V3 satellites, for as soon as Thursday, July 16.
why it matters
Closing the investigation removes the last regulatory hurdle before SpaceX can fly Starship again, keeping the vehicle's test cadence on track after a booster-recovery failure. Flight 13 is also the first Starship mission carrying operational payloads rather than mass simulators, a step toward the vehicle generating revenue instead of just testing hardware.
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- SpaceX
- Category
- regulatory
- Impact
- notable
- SNR
- 4 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-07-13
- Published
- 2026-07-13 19:05 UTC