Starship Aims for First Orbit, Carrying Live Starlink V3s

SpaceX's Starship Flight 14 will attempt the rocket's first orbit, deploying 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites on a roughly ten-hour mission from Starbase.

After 13 suborbital test flights since April 2023, SpaceX's 407-foot Starship-Super Heavy stack will attempt to reach Earth orbit for the first time on Monday, September 28, launching from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas during a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. local time.

Unlike prior flights, Starship will launch on the same passively safe suborbital trajectory toward the Indian Ocean, then decide in orbit. About 25 minutes after liftoff, Ship 41 will reignite a single sea-level Raptor engine for a circularization burn — per Aviation Week, a 19-second burn beginning 25 minutes and 17 seconds after liftoff — to reach a circular orbit around 275 kilometers up. SpaceX will only commit to the burn if flight controllers confirm the vehicle is healthy enough to later perform the deorbit burn; if not, the ship will simply fall back on the familiar suborbital path. Analyst Kathleen Curlee of Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology told AFP the orbital insertion is 'the hardest part,' demanding more force and more complex calculations.

If orbit is achieved, deployment of 26 Starlink Version 3 satellites begins roughly 34 minutes after liftoff, released in one-minute increments over about 30 minutes. These are the first operational V3 units — the 20 V3 satellites flown on July's Flight 13 were short-lived demonstrations that burned up. Three of the satellites carry extra imaging capability to capture video of Ship's heat-shield tiles during flight, continuing a remote-sensing inspection test. Once in orbit, the ship will circle Earth about six times at roughly 170 miles altitude, below the International Space Station, before an 11-second deorbit burn sets up a Pacific splashdown west of Chile nearly ten hours after launch.

SpaceX will not attempt to recover either stage. The Super Heavy booster, tail number B21, will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff, as on previous flights. Ship 41, tail number S41, is targeting a controlled Pacific splashdown roughly an hour after its deorbit burn, with the full mission expected to run about nine hours and 50 minutes — a dramatic stretch for a program whose longest flights lasted about 65 minutes. Aviation Week notes a return-to-pad catch of the Ship has been retargeted for Flight 15, depending on how Monday's flight goes, after CEO Elon Musk floated attempting it this time.

The orbital debut is the gateway to everything Starship exists to do. Beyond orbit, future missions need multiple tanker rendezvous and off-Earth propellant transfer, which SpaceX has yet to demonstrate, and a life-support system before crews fly — with NASA counting on Starship as the first crewed Artemis lunar lander, per space.com. The FAA issued the launch license on September 26 after a full wet dress rehearsal on September 24, keeping the mission on track, and Teslarati reports the flight is Starship's first revenue-generating mission following the company's June IPO. Monday also lands 10 years and a day after Musk first unveiled the Interplanetary Transport System design that became Starship.

SpaceX has stacked the schedule behind this attempt. Backup launch dates of September 29 and 30 are set if Monday slips, per Teslarati. Engineers will spend the roughly eight hours in orbit gathering data on engines, navigation, fuel tanks and communications, and flying heat-shield inspections, feeding directly into the reuse campaign SpaceX says begins 'by going to orbit.'