SpaceX set up Starship’s 14th flight on September 28 as its first-ever attempt to reach orbit, after 13 earlier flights that were deliberately kept suborbital. The milestone lands 18 years after the company’s first rocket, Falcon 1, made it to orbit. Roughly 25 minutes after liftoff, the upper stage was to relight an engine to circularize its path, then release 26 Starlink V3 satellites over about half an hour, one per minute. Three of those satellites carry extra cameras to film the ship’s heat shield tiles. The plan called for about six trips around Earth and a controlled splashdown off South America nearly ten hours after launch, with neither stage being recovered. If it went well, SpaceX said it might try to catch the next Starship upper stage on Flight 15.
One heads-up: this article is the pre-launch preview, so it describes the plan rather than what happened. Spaceflight Now’s follow-up headline says the ship actually splashed down north of Hawaii after about three hours, which is much shorter than the planned flight, so it’s worth reading that piece before sharing this as a success story.
