Starship Flight 13 Targets July 16 as China Catches First Booster and FCC Clears Reflect Orbital

SpaceX is aiming to fly Starship Flight 13 as soon as July 16 in a 90-minute window opening at 6:45 p.m. Eastern from Starbase, and this time the upper stage will deploy 20 functioning Starlink V3 satellites, replacing the mass simulators flown on earlier tests.

The company says it modified the booster startup sequence and Raptor hardware to correct the off-axis flip and early boostback shutdown that marred Flight 12's soft splashdown on May 22. The Super Heavy static fire was completed a day before the flight target was set, moving Starship from anomaly review back to an operational pace.

On the same day Starship's window firmed up, China's state-owned CALT recovered a Long March 10B booster at sea on its maiden flight, capturing the stage in a netted frame aboard the 25,000-ton Linghang Zhe downrange from Wenchang. Officials confirmed a follow-on all-methalox Long March 10C as the family's commercial workhorse, and China Commercial Rocket Co. was recapitalized to about 4.17 billion yuan, roughly $616 million, with heavy new investment from the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology. The recovery makes CASC the third organization after SpaceX and Blue Origin to bring an orbital-class booster back intact.

Regulators and defense buyers filled in the rest of the day. The FCC authorized Reflect Orbital's 142-kilogram Eärendil-1 demonstrator to deploy an 18-meter thin-film reflector at 600 to 650 kilometers, brushing past nearly 2,000 comments from astronomers and dark-sky groups by treating the mission as a single-satellite test.

The Pentagon selected Lockheed Martin Aculight and nLIGHT for the Joint Laser Weapon System, an $86 million start with an $847 million ceiling, and Pulse Space picked up a $40 million Space Force OTA for on-orbit laser power beaming. Lockheed separately booked an $850 million Navy modification for Trident II D5 Life Extension 2.