SpaceX is counting down to the launch of Starship Flight 12 from its Starbase facility in South Texas, US.

Liftoff is targeted for no earlier than 4:00 am IST on Friday, May 22, with a 90-minute window to get off the ground.

SpaceX’s Starship has made some innovative efforts to set the bar for modern space travel, but it remains to be seen if it delivers.

Standing over 400 feet tall when fully stacked, Starship is the largest, most powerful launch vehicle ever built.

The early morning launch is the debut of an entirely new version of the rocket called Starship V3, which has been redesigned from top to bottom to be more reliable and, crucially, fully reusable.

That last part, about being reusable, is what makes this a big deal.

Rather than being discarded after each flight like most rockets, Starship is built to be flown over and over again, which SpaceX says will dramatically reduce the cost of getting to space.

Starship is executing a banking maneuver that mimics the final approach it would take while returning to Starbase for a catch on a future mission pic.twitter.com/t4Al1xg7Xe— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 14, 2025

And it’s just the first step for SpaceX, which also has bigger ambitions to eventually use Starship to send humans to Mars.

Watch Starship’s twelfth flight test https://t.co/wxna6dy4Lh— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 21, 2026

The livestream kicks off roughly 45 minutes before liftoff, so tune in around 3:15 am IST on May 22 to catch all the pre-launch action.

As for the flight itself, about seven minutes after liftoff, the Super Heavy first-stage booster will separate and make a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Starship upper stage will then continue on a high-arcing suborbital path across the sky, deploying a batch of Starlink test satellites along the way, before splashing down in the Indian Ocean, approximately 65 minutes after launch.

Both stages are designed to splash down rather than be caught by the launch tower on this maiden V3 flight.

Whether tonight goes smoothly or throws up a surprise, this is one of those rare moments when history is genuinely up for grabs.

Source: India Today