Elon Musk flies to Hawthorne after SpaceX’s Starship V3 debut

Elon Musk flew from Moffett Federal Airfield to Hawthorne Municipal Airport on May 23, 2026, a 66-minute hop in the Gulfstream G550 N272BG. The short Bay-to-basin trip lands at Jack Northrop Field, home to SpaceX headquarters.

The same week, SpaceX launched the first Starship V3 test flight from Texas, a milestone the company is counting on ahead of a record-breaking IPO expected next month, per the BBC and ABC News. Musk publicly congratulated the team on X after the vehicle deployed 20 dummy satellites and splashed down in the Indian Ocean. Hawthorne is where the company’s engineering and management teams are based, making this a natural post-launch debrief location.

The flight follows a pattern: N272BG and Musk’s other Gulfstreams have shuttled between Texas and California repeatedly in recent days. Two jets were tracked leaving the same airports minutes apart earlier this week, a coordination that has become routine as Musk shuttles between Starbase, SpaceX facilities, and Tesla operations.