Starship Targets First Orbital Flight on 14th Test, Carrying Starlink V3 Satellites

SpaceX is preparing to launch the 14th flight of Starship as soon as Tuesday, September 22, in what would be the vehicle's first attempt to reach orbit around Earth. The 75-minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. CT, pending regulatory approval, and the mission marks a decisive shift into a new phase of development.

Every Starship flight test to this point has intentionally flown passively safe suborbital trajectories to maximize public safety while allowing for maximum learning. By going to orbit, SpaceX can begin the next phase of developing Starship to be fully and rapidly reusable. The flight will also be the first to deploy Starlink V3 satellites into the constellation.

The orbital mission is expected to fly at an altitude of approximately 275 km, completing roughly six orbits over a nearly 10-hour flight, with splashdown targeted in the Pacific Ocean to the west of Chile. A live webcast will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, with coverage planned through splashdown and the potential for hours of live views from Starship as it orbits Earth.

The Super Heavy booster's primary objectives are a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and landing burn at an offshore point in the Gulf of America. Several hardware and software modifications address issues from the previous flight. On Flight 13, the booster used all 33 engines on its boostback burn for the first time, but in the terminal phase the three center engines showed signs of ice clogging, which triggered an early end to the maneuver. The booster then attempted a landing burn, with 8 of 13 planned engines reigniting before a hard splashdown. This booster carries improved engine filtering and software changes to enhance relight reliability.

The Starship upper stage's primary objectives include the first orbital insertion maneuver, deployment of 26 Starlink V3 satellites, a deorbit burn using a single Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry, descent, and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Starship will execute the orbital insertion burn only after the flight control team confirms sufficient redundancy on hardware critical to the subsequent deorbit burn.

Each Starlink V3 satellite adds 1 Tbps of capacity to the constellation, for a total of 26 Tbps added on this mission alone. That is about 10 times the capacity of a single launch of V2 mini Starlink satellites on Falcon 9. After deployment, the satellites will unfold their antennas, deploy solar arrays, and make initial contact with the ground and the rest of the constellation via radio frequency and laser links, then raise their orbits with onboard thrusters. Following on-orbit checkouts, the satellites should begin serving customers as soon as a few weeks after launch. Three of the satellites carry a suite of cameras to scan Starship's heatshield and transmit imagery to operators, part of continued testing of methods to analyze heatshield readiness for future return-to-launch-site missions.

Reaching orbit enables the next phase of developing Starship to be fully and rapidly reusable, while the Starlink V3 deployment aims to dramatically expand connectivity speeds and reliability around the world, greatly expanding the network's capacity and user speeds.

As with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change. The flight remains contingent on regulatory approval, and SpaceX plans to post updates on its website and X account ahead of liftoff.