Bertha Delays SpaceX Starship Flight 13, Launch Succeeds Next Day

A Storm, an Abort, and a One-Day Reprieve

SpaceX's push to fly its 13th Starship test mission ran into two very different obstacles this week: a stubborn engine problem and a tropical storm. The company had originally hoped to launch from its Starbase site in South Texas on July 16, but an automatic abort at the very end of the countdown scrubbed that attempt after several Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster failed to ignite properly 1015. Reports varied slightly on the exact number of engines involved, with some citing four that never fired and others describing six with turbopump issues, but the outcome was the same — the vehicle stayed grounded while the flight software protected it from a bad start 6912.

Elon Musk said on social media that the failed ignitions triggered the abort, and SpaceX spent the following days destacking the ship, swapping out Raptor engines and running fresh ground tests before restacking the vehicle at the pad 71015. That work culminated in a new target of Thursday, July 23, with SpaceX warning plainly that weather had become "a significant watch item" for the attempt 1217.

Bertha Arrives on Launch Day

The weather concern had a name: Tropical Storm Bertha, the second named storm of the Atlantic season, which was pushing rain, gusty winds and rough surf toward the upper Texas and Louisiana coastline just as SpaceX prepared to fly 1516. The National Hurricane Center tracked Bertha with sustained winds near 45 mph and a wind field stretching up to 160 miles from its center, and it warned of storm surge of one to three feet along parts of the northern Gulf Coast, along with 2 to 4 inches of rain and isolated totals near 6 inches capable of triggering flash flooding 1113. By Thursday night the system had weakened to a tropical depression, with winds down to 35 mph and rainfall forecasts scaled back to 1 to 3 inches, and all tropical storm warnings for Texas and Louisiana were eventually lifted 14.

Crucially, Bertha's center never had to pass directly over Starbase to cause a problem. What mattered most to SpaceX was cloud cover, not just wind or rain. The company said thick clouds would have blocked the ground-based cameras needed to capture clear images of Starship's heat shield as it climbed through the atmosphere at high dynamic pressure — one of the flight's central objectives 1610. SpaceX called off Thursday's attempt several hours before the launch window and said it would try again Friday, when visibility was expected to be far better 612.

Coverage Emphasized Different Angles

Outlets covering the delay framed it in slightly different ways. USA Today's coverage stressed the bad timing of a weather system arriving right after a mechanical setback, tying the mission's stakes to both Starship's development and NASA's Artemis lunar program 1516. Wire coverage circulated by outlets including the Express-News and other regional papers focused on the specific technical rationale — that cloudy skies would compromise the heat-shield imagery SpaceX wanted — while also noting the engine swaps that preceded it 612. Spaceflight Now situated the delay within the broader recovery effort following the July 16 abort, emphasizing the multi-day process of engine replacement and retesting 7. Space.com tracked the campaign in near-real time as the target date slipped from July 16 to July 20 to July 23 and finally July 24 817. CNN, writing after the flight, highlighted the irony that the very weather delay meant to protect heat-shield observation preceded one of the mission's biggest technical wins 1820.

A newsroom meteorologist quoted in Texas coverage said the outlook for Friday was far more favorable, with Bertha's remnants pushed west and little chance of rain, though gusty winds of 15 to 20 mph with occasional gusts to 25 mph remained a lingering concern for the 5:45 p.m. Central launch window 612.

Liftoff and a Successful Flight

SpaceX's gamble on Friday paid off. Starship Flight 13 lifted off from Starbase at 6:51 p.m. Eastern time on July 24, using Super Heavy Booster 20 and Ship 40 in the Version 3 configuration 89. All 33 Raptor engines on the booster fired at liftoff, addressing the concern that had scrubbed the July 16 attempt 89.

The mission carried out a profile similar to earlier Version 3 tests: the Super Heavy booster separated and was expected to come down in the Gulf of Mexico, while Ship 40 continued on a long suborbital arc toward a splashdown in the Indian Ocean 6912. Along the way, Flight 13 achieved a notable first — deploying 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites, rather than the mass simulators used on previous flights 919. SpaceX confirmed contact with all 20 satellites after deployment, and the spacecraft extended their solar arrays and antennas and tested high-capacity laser links meant to eventually connect with the broader Starlink constellation 1820. Because the satellites were riding along on Starship's suborbital trajectory rather than being inserted into orbit, they were designed to reenter and burn up roughly 20 minutes after release rather than join the operational network of roughly 10,800 satellites already providing service 61219.

Six of the satellites carried cameras specifically intended to observe Starship's heat shield during flight and relay that imagery to the ground — the same objective that had driven SpaceX to wait out Bertha in the first place 181920. Musk and SpaceX both highlighted how well the heat shield performed, describing it as a marked improvement over prior flights, and Starship went on to complete an in-space engine relight before reentry 1820.

Why It Matters

The episode captured a recurring tension in Starship's test campaign: the vehicle's schedule is vulnerable not just to hardware failures like the July 16 engine-start abort, but to entirely unrelated environmental factors, from Gulf Coast humidity to cloud decks. Flight 13 followed on the heels of an FAA mishap investigation into the previous flight, underscoring that SpaceX's rapid-iteration approach still carries real technical risk even as the company pushes toward routine, high-cadence launches 9.

The stakes go beyond a single test flight. Starship underpins SpaceX's plans to scale up Starlink deployment, eventually launching dozens of satellites per flight instead of the 20 flown as a demonstration this time. It is also central to NASA's Artemis program, which depends on a Starship-derived human landing system to ferry astronauts to the lunar surface. A one-day weather delay caused by a modest tropical storm may seem minor in isolation, but it illustrates how thoroughly the success of both SpaceX's commercial ambitions and NASA's exploration timeline now rests on Starship clearing hurdles that range from turbopump ignition sequences to Gulf Coast storm tracks.