Ship 39 hit the Indian Ocean on Friday, May 22, after a suborbital arc that did three things SpaceX had never done before: it flew the V3 vehicle, it launched from Starbase's Pad 2, and it deployed a payload that included a working Starlink imaging satellite [1]. The splashdown was confirmed within minutes of contact, and the Booster, returning to a hard-water landing in the Gulf of America, ignited its Raptor 3s for a final burn before impact [2].

The interesting fact is in the middle of the flight. One Raptor 3 vacuum engine on Ship 39 shut down during the burn, and the vehicle continued. Engine-out tolerance is something engineers describe rather than demonstrate; the demonstration is the news. The remaining engines compensated, the trajectory held, and the splashdown landed close to its planned point [1].

The orbital test that Starship has been chasing since 2023 is not yet here — Friday's flight was suborbital, and the Booster did not catch. But the V3's first outing answered the question the V2 program had been failing to answer through the spring: can the upper stage finish a mission with a degraded engine cluster? Friday says yes. The Raptor 3 telemetry, if SpaceX releases it, will be the artifact that defines what Flight 13 has to prove.

-- KENJI NAKAMURA, Tokyo