The first-ever Starship V3 launch is set for tomorrow, Thursday May 21, with a 90-minute window opening at 6:30 p.m. EDT from Starbase, Texas. The mission has already slipped twice this week, from Tuesday to Wednesday and now to Thursday, but the rocket is stacked and the test campaign is locked in. Flight 12 is the most important Starship test SpaceX has run, and it comes three weeks before the company is scheduled to price what could be the biggest IPO in history.

V3 is a different vehicle from anything that has flown before. SpaceX is debuting the Raptor 3 engine, a redesigned Super Heavy booster, and the first launch from Starbase Pad 2. Payload capacity in reusable configuration jumps to over 100 metric tons, roughly three times the previous version. That is the number that matters for the Mars architecture and for the Starlink V3 satellite rollout. Until V3 flies and reaches orbit successfully, that capacity is still a promise on a slide.

The flight profile is suborbital. Booster 19 will execute ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff. Ship 39 will deploy 22 Starlink simulators sized to next-generation satellites, then perform a water landing in the Indian Ocean. The last two simulators carry cameras that will scan the upper stage's heat shield and beam imagery back to operators. That data feeds the methodology for future return-to-launch-site catches, which is the prerequisite for actual reusability.

The day-to-day cadence is already operating at scale. Last night a Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg carrying 24 Starlink satellites (Group 17-42), with booster B1103 landing on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 612th booster landing to date and the 197th on that specific vessel. The constellation now sits just under 10,500 working satellites with over 9 million customers. Starlink itself more than doubled its profit last year to $4.4 billion, and that profit is what the IPO is being priced against.

The financing context is the part that turns this from a technology story into a market story. SpaceX targets a June 12 listing on Nasdaq under ticker SPCX, with a roadshow starting June 4 and pricing on June 11. The initial filing targeted $75 billion raised at a $1.75 trillion valuation. Bloomberg has since reported that internal filings pushed the target above $2 trillion. For comparison, the largest IPO on record is Saudi Aramco in 2019, which raised $29 billion at a $1.7 trillion valuation. If SpaceX prices anywhere near these numbers, the record gets rewritten.

The two events stack neatly. A successful V3 flight tomorrow gives the bankers the cleanest possible setup heading into the roadshow. A failure does not kill the IPO, but it changes the tone of every conversation in the next three weeks. Watch the launch, then watch the cadence of follow-up tests. Then watch the price talk.