SpaceX’s Starship will orbit Earth for first time during next flight — SkimNews
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- Starship Flight 14 will open a launch window at 7:15am CDT on September 22nd from Starbase, Texas — the vehicle's first orbital mission and 14th test flight overall, with all 13 prior flights sub-orbital.
- The flight will reach 275 km altitude, complete 6 Earth orbits over 10 hours, and target splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile — by far the longest and most ambitious Starship test to date.
- Starlink V3 satellites will be deployed for the first time — 26 of them, marking the first commercial payload on a Starship test after 13 prior missions carried only dummy satellites.
- Flight 13 suffered a booster failure when only 8 of 13 engines reignited for descent, causing a hard splashdown rather than the planned soft water landing; neither stage will attempt a controlled landing on Flight 14.
- Three Starlink V3 satellites carry cameras to photograph Starship's heat shield during orbit and transmit images to engineers on Earth.
- Only 2 Starship flights have launched in 2026 so far; SpaceX hoped for 25 test flights last year but completed just 5, reflecting a steep drop in cadence.
- SpaceX's upcoming flight will be the second since the company's stock market flotation, which made founder Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire.
Why it matters: Flight 14 transitions Starship from a test article into a commercial platform — yet with only 5 flights completed last year against a hoped-for 25, and Flight 13's recent booster failure, SpaceX still faces gaps in launch cadence and re-entry reliability before Starship can fulfill its planned central role in NASA's Artemis moon missions.
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