SpaceX Stock Advances Ahead of Planned Starship Sept 22 Orbital Test

SpaceX Stock Advances Ahead of Planned Starship Sept 22 Orbital Test

Aditya Raghunath

Thu, September 17, 2026 at 11:59 AM GMT+3 3 min read

• SPCX -2.23%

Key Stats for SpaceX Stock

• Price change for SpaceX stock in last 1 month: 3%

• $SPCX Stock Price as of Sep. 16: $151

• 52-Week High: $226

• $SPCX Stock Price Target: $222

What Happened?

SpaceX (SPCX) stock is drawing attention as the company gears up for Starship's 14th flight, planned for as soon as Tuesday, September 22.

The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. CT, pending regulatory approval.

This flight is a big deal. It will be the first time Starship attempts to reach orbit, rather than flying the suborbital paths used in earlier tests.

It's also the first mission set to deploy Starlink V3 satellites, which the company says carry roughly 10 times the capacity of the older V2 mini satellites.

SpaceX plans to send up 26 of them, adding about 26 terabits per second of capacity to the Starlink network in one shot.

The booster has been upgraded too. On Flight 13, ice buildup caused some engines to cut off early during the boostback burn, and the booster ended up making a hard splashdown instead of a clean landing. Engineers have since made hardware and software changes to address that.

Confidence is running high on the technical side.

On the Q2 earnings call, Elon Musk said the heat shield problem, long considered Starship's toughest engineering hurdle, appears to be solved based on data from the last flight.

The financial backdrop also supports SpaceX stock right now.

The company posted 92% revenue growth in Q2, nearly halved its net loss year over year, and swung its AI segment to positive adjusted EBITDA for the first time.

Management also said it now expects to hit $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030, a year earlier than previously projected.

What the Market Is Telling Us About SpaceX Stock

Investors watching SpaceX stock seem to be treating Starship's progress as a genuine catalyst rather than just another test flight.

That's because Starship underpins nearly every growth story the company has told, from cheaper, more frequent launches to a much larger Starlink constellation to future AI infrastructure ambitions in space.

With the heat shield issue reportedly resolved and booster fixes in place, a clean orbital flight on September 22 would mark a real turning point.

It would move Starship closer to routine reuse, which is central to the bull case for SpaceX stock heading into 2027 and beyond.

A setback, on the other hand, likely wouldn't derail the story given the company's cash position and diversified revenue base, but it would delay some of the more ambitious targets management has laid out.

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