SpaceX Readies First Orbital Starship Flight as Shotwell's Planned $52.5 Million Sale Draws Attention

SpaceX is targeting Monday, September 28 for Starship's 14th flight, the vehicle's first attempt at orbit after 13 suborbital tests. The launch window opens at 8:15 a.m. Eastern, or 7:15 a.m. Central, and the upper stage is set to deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites, orbit Earth six times over about 10 hours, and splash down in the Pacific west of Chile.

The stock heads into the flight well off its peak rather than surging. SPCX closed Friday at $148.68, about 34% below its $225.64 high. For context, shares priced at $135 in the June IPO, opened at $150, and closed their first session at $160.95.

The week's insider headline is a single transaction. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's President and COO, exercised options on 342,170 shares at $8.40 to $19.40 each and sold them on September 22 at roughly $151 to $155, for about $52.5 million. The Form 4 shows the trade ran under a Rule 10b5-1 plan she adopted on June 23, about three months before the flight date, and it is the first stock sale by a SpaceX executive since the listing. She still holds about 5.58 million shares, worth roughly $830 million. Separately, about 328 million shares were released from the IPO lock-up on September 24.

What to watch: whether Starship reaches orbit and deploys the V3 satellites, how the stock absorbs the newly unlocked supply, and whether further Form 4 filings follow. The 33 analysts tracked by TipRanks carry an average target of $232.07.