When the SpaceX (SPCX.US) stock price broke, Starship V3 strives to support the belief in “Starlink, Moon Landing, and Space AI” with the 13th test flight

The Zhitong Finance App learned that SpaceX (SPCX.US), an American supertech giant founded by Musk that focuses on “AI+ space exploration,” will test a major test flight of its giant Starship rocket (Starship) on Thursday local time. For the “Space AI Empire,” a large-scale enterprise group covering cutting-edge technology fields such as space, satellite communications, AI computing power infrastructure, and artificial intelligence applications, which Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is trying to create, this aircraft is a critical technical link, and this test flight will become an important milestone.

The launch is scheduled to take place at 5:45 p.m. local time from SpaceX's Starship base in southern Texas. This will be the second launch and flight of the latest version of the Starship rocket — known as the Third Edition or V3. The rocket will carry upgraded Starlink (Starlink) satellites into space; as part of this test mission, these satellites will then burn up in the atmosphere.

This time, the Starship carried out a sub-orbital test trajectory, and did not launch the satellite into a stable circular orbit that can be maintained for a long time, so it was a deliberately designed “sacrificial verification”; after the release of the 20 Starlink V3s, they will fly along a trajectory similar to the Starship, and their orbital perigee will still be deep into the atmosphere, so they will burn down after about 20 minutes due to aerodynamic heating generated by high-speed re-entry. In other words, “entering space” is not equal to “successfully entering orbit”; for long-term operation, it is also necessary to obtain sufficient lateral speed and complete orbital rounding.

This time, we mainly verified the Starship satellite launch mechanism, Starlink V3 solar panel and antenna deployment, laser interstellar link, and terrestrial communication capabilities; some of these satellites are also equipped with cameras and sensors to observe the insulation shield and control performance of the Starship from the outside. SpaceX is equivalent to using 20 early satellites to reduce the technical risk of deploying thousands of V3 satellites and commercial operation of starships in batches in the future; actively burning them can also prevent the test payload from becoming long-term space debris after it gets out of control.

As the richest person in the world so far, Musk has accomplished what others thought was impossible in the past — building a commercially viable high-frequency rocket launch business through SpaceX, bringing electric vehicles into the mainstream market through Tesla, the global electric vehicle leader, and providing internet connection infrastructure services from space through Starlink (Starlink). However, there are also investors who doubt whether Musk will actually be able to build the “most epic” core building operation he recently proposed in Austin and whether he can actually achieve the “superblueprint for artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, humanoid robots, and space AI data centers” he hopes for.

Starship returns to launch platform: space AI data center, Starlink expansion, and human lunar landing program face key battles

This rocket launch and test flight is also at the core of Musk's ambitions to deploy a huge AI data center in space, expand the Starlink satellite communication network, and send humans and huge robot armies to the Moon and Mars. However, the actual development process did not go smoothly, and the period was full of explosive setbacks, failures, and delays.

This Starship test will be the rocket's 13th flight. It is also the first Starship launch and flight since SpaceX conducted a sensational US stock market initial public offering in June and a record raising of about 86 billion US dollars in capital market history.

SpaceX's stock price soared sharply soon after listing, but recently fell. By the close of trading on July 15, it was close to the IPO issuance price of 135 US dollars per share, and fell below the IPO issuance price for a while during the intraday period. Despite falling stock prices, Wall Street analysts are generally optimistic about the stock as a whole.

The space exploration and artificial intelligence company founded and led by Musk designed Starships as fully reusable rockets, an ambitious goal that no other rocket manufacturer has yet achieved on a large scale. According to the design, the super-heavy booster and Starship spacecraft spacecraft will fully return to Earth after each launch in order to fly back into space.

Musk expects SpaceX to use the upgraded v3 rocket to achieve full reuse by the end of this year. According to information, SpaceX has invested more than 15 billion US dollars to develop the Starship system.

In the most recent test flight conducted in May of this year, the Starship successfully deployed a simulated satellite, but the rocket booster lost control and began spinning in a disorderly manner, and one of the engines shut down prematurely. According to an article published on SpaceX's official website, the company has since made hardware and software modifications to address these issues.

Brian Gesuale, a senior analyst from Raymond James, a well-known Wall Street investment agency, said in a July 13 report: “We believe that if SpaceX can ensure that all major engines maintain normal and efficient operation, perform scheduled reignition and landing procedures, and bring back more valuable insulation shields and control surface statistics, then flight 13 will mean substantial progress compared to the 12th flight.”

He added that the entry into actual operation of the Starship “is one of the key paths for the establishment of SpaceX's investment logic.”

Jonathan Siegman, a senior stock analyst from Stiffel, said that if the Starship's test succeeds, it may also prompt the company to try officially enter space orbit for the first time during the next flight.

SpaceX holds a $4 billion NASA contract with the goal of using a starship to send astronauts to the moon as early as 2028. To achieve this goal, SpaceX must efficiently refuel the aircraft in space, launch it more than ten times in a row, and ensure that it has the ability to carry people safely. For an aircraft that has yet to complete a full orbital mission, this is a series of extremely challenging missions.

The flight plan for Thursday will be broadly similar to previous test missions. When launched, the super-heavy booster will ignite 33 SpaceX raptor engines and send the starship to space, bringing it to a speed close to orbital operation. The booster would then detach from the Starship and attempt to splash in the Gulf of Mexico.

During the space flight, the Starship system will attempt to perform a number of important tests, including reigniting an engine and deploying at least 20 Starlink satellites. These satellites will significantly expand the solar panel array and attempt to connect to the wider Starlink satellite network through laser communication.

After about 20 minutes of deployment, these satellites should fall back to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. About an hour after launch, the Starship was scheduled to splash in the Indian Ocean.

Stock prices break, Starship ignites bullish frenzy: SpaceX uses 13th test flight to defend “Starlink, Moon Landing, and Orbital Data Center” beliefs

As far as SpaceX stock prices are concerned, the 13th Starship test flight is an important execution repricing window, but it is not a universal catalyst that can reverse the stock price alone. The company's stock price fell to a low of $132.28 on Wednesday, falling below the issue price of $135 for the first time and closing at $135.27; the market capitalization has fallen from a high of over $2.6 trillion after listing to around $1.78 trillion. Market concerns stem not only from technical risks, but also from the company's loss of 4.9 billion US dollars last year, the recent investment of 25 billion US dollars in AI and infrastructure through bond financing, and supply pressure that may be brought about by the August earnings report and the lifting of the ban on some restricted stocks.

If this test flight successfully completes engine operation, aerial reignition, satellite deployment, and controlled splash, it will reduce the risk at the end of the Starship R&D path and may trigger an emotional overfall and rebound trajectory; however, continued reassessment will still require subsequent orbital flights, reuse capacity, and commercial cash flow.

Judging from the fundamentals of SpaceX's performance, Starship is not an ordinary product in SpaceX's many projects, but an underlying transportation system that shares the three major narratives of Starlink expansion, space AI data center, and manned lunar landing. Once complete reuse and 100 ton capacity are achieved, unit orbital entry costs can be significantly reduced, and larger Starlink satellites, high-power computational payloads, and orbital infrastructure can be launched into space at a higher frequency.

SpaceX has launched 1,589 Starlink satellites in the first half of the year, showing that its current deployment capabilities are ahead, but the orbital AI data center is still in the early stages of concept and engineering verification. The technical threshold for the lunar landing mission is even higher: the NASA plan requires launching an orbital fuel bank and completing in-orbit propellant polymerization through more than ten starship refueling flights, so every time reliability, reusability, and in-orbit operation progress actually simultaneously increases the probability that three long-term businesses can be realized. The “Musk faith” that has taken the global investor base by storm may be heating up further due to successful test flights, but its nature is changing: pricing can be relied on grand visions before listing, and must shift to pricing milestones, revenue, and return on capital after listing. What can really upgrade the belief to a sustainable bull market is the coverage of huge capital expenses due to continuous stable flights, complete reuse, first complete orbital entry, in-orbit refueling, and Starlink and orbital data center revenue generation.