SpaceX notched some crucial early successes with Starship’s design during uncrewed, suborbital test flights. The company was first able to recover a Super Heavy booster, for example, in October 2024 — landing the rocket snugly in the metal arms of SpaceX’s “Mechazilla” launch tower in Starbase, Texas.
But SpaceX experienced several mishaps with Version 2 of Starship, which first took flight in January 2025.
During two separate test flights in January and March, the vehicle exploded near populated areas east of Florida, creating debris that hit roadways in Turks and Caicos and washed up onto Bahamian islands.
Starship will not fly over those territories on Wednesday, per SpaceX’s altered Starship flight plan.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches and evaluates risks, mapped out some of the Flight 12 path in an advisory. The new path shows Starship flying south of Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, rather than farther north over Turks and Caicos as previous flights have traveled.
SpaceX’s run with Starship V2 concluded with a few clean test runs, culminating with Flight 11 in October.
