SpaceX's Starship to Make First Orbital Flight September 22 — SkimNews
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- SpaceX's Starship launches on its 14th flight from Starbase, Texas, with a window opening September 22nd at 7:15am CDT; the mission will reach 275 km altitude, complete six orbits over 10 hours, and splash down in the Pacific west of Chile
- The flight marks Starship's first orbital mission and first commercially useful payload: 26 Starlink V3 satellites, which fly in a lower orbit with higher data capacity than earlier Starlink models — replacing the dummy test satellites flown on all previous flights
- Three of the V3 satellites carry cameras to scan Starship's heat shield during orbit and relay images to engineers, a diagnostic step given repeated re-entry problems in prior tests
- Neither the Super Heavy booster nor upper stage will attempt a controlled landing on Flight 14; on the 13th flight only 8 of 13 booster engines reignited during descent, forcing a hard splashdown
- Imperial College London's Davide Amato said orbital success signals confidence but flagged re-entry as unresolved, adding that whether Starship becomes "revolutionary" depends on high launch cadence and cost-effective design
- Only two Starship flights have flown in 2026 so far, far short of SpaceX's earlier ambition of up to 25 test flights last year (only five occurred); Flight 14 is also the second since SpaceX's stock market flotation, which made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire
Why it matters: Flight 14 is the first mission where Starship carries operational Starlink V3 satellites rather than mass simulators, a step SpaceX and NASA both need: the V3s feed SpaceX's internet constellation while proving the launch capacity central to NASA's Artemis lunar landings. Re-entry remains the unresolved variable — SpaceX has lost or damaged hardware on multiple recent attempts — and any failure would delay the commercial cadence the company needs to justify its post-IPO trillionaire valuation.
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