SpaceX Launches Starship Again -- Barrons.com

By Al Root

SpaceX's huge Starship finally got off the ground again. Elon Musk's rocket and AI company launched the fully reusable rocket on its 13th test flight at about 6:45 p.m. Eastern time.

SpaceX shares were down 0.3% in after-hours trading shortly after the launch.

This is breaking news. Check back for updates. Read a preview of the launch below.

Forget Starship test flight number 13. SpaceX stock will face an even greater challenge in the coming weeks: a Wall Street earnings report.

Shares of Elon Musk's rocket and AI company fell on Friday after another Starship testing delay and a new lukewarm rating from Wall Street.

Shares traded as low as $111.40 and closed at $115.07, down 2.7%. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 0.1% and 0.5%, respectively. SpaceX shares are down just under 50% from their all-time high of $225.65 on June 16.

Another launch delay weighed on investor sentiment. SpaceX scrubbed its second attempt to fly its huge, fully reusable Starship rocket for the 13th time. The first attempt on July 17 was aborted due to an engine issue. The second attempt on July 23 was aborted due to weather.

SpaceX tries again on Friday evening. The Texas launch can be watched at spacex.com and on X.

Starship is incredibly important for SpaceX, cutting the per-kilogram cost to reach orbit by 90% or more. Low costs enable business opportunities such as AI data centers in space.

In test 13, "the booster's primary test objective will be executing a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and landing burn at an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America," according to the company. Eventually, SpaceX plans to catch the booster with giant mechanical arms, partly to aid in rapid reusability.

Starship's upper stage will try to deploy 20 Starlink V3 -- or version three -- satellites, and attempt an in-space relight (reignition) of a single Raptor rocket engine before a controlled re-entry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Starlink is SpaceX's space-based broadband business, with more than 10 million subscribers.

Along with Starship delays, a new rating hit shares. HSBC analyst Nicolas Cote-Colisson launched coverage of the stock with a Hold rating and a $115 price target, according to Wall Street ratings aggregators. Barron's hasn't seen the full report. HSBC declined to provide a copy of the report.

A Hold is a surprise for SpaceX. Wall Street has been positive on its stock. Overall, 28 of 37, or 76%, of analysts covering shares rate them Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for S&P 500 stocks ranges from 55% to 60%. The average analyst price target for SpaceX stock is about $237 a share, according to FactSet.

According to summaries, Cote-Colisson says SpaceX is impressive, but that investors should be "prudent." The stock faces more selling pressure as shares of early investors become available to trade after the record-setting June IPO.

The company's first earnings report on Aug. 4 will be a key catalyst for the stock, according to the analyst. SpaceX will have to demonstrate growth in the Starlink business to give shares a boost.

They could use some help. Coming into Friday trading, the stock was down more than 40% from its closing high of $201.80, and down 12% from its $135 IPO price.

The stock just can't gain any altitude. After back-to-back 19%-plus gains in the two days following the IPO, SpaceX shares have dropped in 17 of the past 26 trading sessions, including a brutal seven-day losing streak that ended on Tuesday. After snapping the streak, SpaceX stock dropped again, losing 6.7% on Wednesday.

Maybe Starship, and then the Aug. 4 earnings report, can help shares stabilize. Investors will have to wait and see.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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July 24, 2026 18:57 ET (22:57 GMT)