SpaceX launched its Starship rocket from Starbase, Texas, at 8:49 a.m. EDT (15:49 Kyiv time) on September 28. The 14th test flight became the first to reach orbit — all 13 previous flights were suborbital, CBS News reports.
Starship stands about 400 feet (122 meters) tall. Its Super Heavy first stage, powered by 33 Raptor engines, packs twice the thrust of NASA’s SLS moon rocket. One of those engines shut down early during the climb, but the booster still did its job. Two minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff, the stages separated in a “hot staging” maneuver — the upper stage lit its engines before Super Heavy fell away. The booster then flipped around and headed back toward the Texas coast. A second engine apparently quit during that boost-back burn, yet Super Heavy still made a vertical splashdown a few miles offshore.
The upper stage had its own problems. It first climbed onto a suborbital path, chosen on purpose so it would fall safely into the ocean even if SpaceX lost control. On that leg, one of its six engines shut down prematurely. India’s ANI news agency notes it was a Raptor Vacuum. After reviewing telemetry, flight controllers judged the rest of the vehicle healthy and cleared it for orbit. A single Raptor then pushed the stage to an altitude of about 275 km (170 miles), SpaceX said on X.
Eight and a half minutes after reaching orbit, Starship got to the main job of the mission. A dispenser in its nose began pushing out 26 third-generation Starlink V3 satellites one by one. The sequence was expected to take about 30 minutes, and ANI says SpaceX deployed every satellite. Once free, each one unfolds its antennas and solar arrays, checks in with ground stations and the rest of the constellation, then uses its own thrusters to raise its orbit. After on-orbit checkouts, the new satellites could start serving customers within a few weeks.
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Each Starlink V3 is built to deliver up to 1 Tbps of downlink and 160 Gbps of uplink capacity. That’s 10 times and 22 times more, respectively, than the previous V2 generation. The satellites talk to each other through six 400 Gbps laser links. For the connection to the ground, they use radio antennas across the Ka, E, V and W bands, with a combined 1.2 Tbps of capacity — more than eight times what V2 offers. SpaceX also fitted three of the 26 satellites with cameras. They will photograph Starship’s heat shield, helping the company learn how to judge whether it’s ready for a return to the launch site on future missions.
After the deployment, Starship is set to circle Earth six times. At 8 hours and 52 minutes after launch — around 00:41 Kyiv time on September 29 — the stage will fire an engine to leave orbit. It will hit the atmosphere belly-first — broadside rather than nose-first — to shed speed faster, steering with its aerodynamic flaps. Over the water, it will relight three Raptor engines, flip upright and splash down in the Pacific off the coast of Chile. The whole mission is planned to last 9 hours and 50 minutes. SpaceX had lined up Starlink V3 for this exact flight back in early September, when it filed an application with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
As it happens, the booster came down more gently this time than on the previous flight. Back then, problems with three engines cut Super Heavy’s boost-back burn short, and only eight of 13 engines fired for landing, leaving the stage to slam into the water. SpaceX has since upgraded its hardware and software. The company already knows how to catch the booster with the launch tower’s giant mechanical arms — it has done so four times. Until the upgrades are proven, though, Super Heavy will keep landing in the ocean.
NASA needs Starship in orbit too. SpaceX is building a dedicated version of the rocket as a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program. The 165-foot (50-meter) lander is meant to carry two astronauts down near the Moon’s south pole. Before that, it has to be refueled in orbit. The propellant will come from tankers — regular Starships whose upper stages carry fuel instead of satellites and pump it into the lander’s tanks. A single mission will need up to 15 of these launches. SpaceX will test that refueling on upcoming flights, and NASA is targeting 2028 for the first landing.
Many veterans of NASA and the aerospace industry doubt SpaceX can meet that deadline. That’s why the agency is also funding development of an alternative lander from Blue Origin. In 2027, on the Artemis III mission, four astronauts aboard an Orion capsule will try to dock in low Earth orbit with prototypes of both landers.
Launching more than a dozen tankers within days will take several launch pads. Two are already operating at Starbase, and three more are under construction in Florida — one at the historic Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center and the others at neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX plans its first Starship launch from Florida for late 2026 or early 2027. In late August, the company also secured land for another Starship spaceport in Louisiana.
Beyond NASA, SpaceX is counting on Starship for its commercial customers as well. On September 25, the company stopped taking orders for Falcon 9 launches after 2028.
