SpaceX Targets September 28 for Starship's First Orbital Flight
SpaceX says the 14th Starship test flight, which will be the vehicle's first full orbital mission and will deploy next-generation Starlink V3 satellites into service, is now targeted for September 28, pending regulatory approval.
SpaceX has pushed back the date of Starship's upcoming test flight from September 22 to September 28, announcing the change on social media without explanation and noting that regulatory approval is still pending. The launch window will open at 8:15AM Eastern Time and last 75 minutes.
The mission, Starship's 14th flight, will mark the first time the vehicle completes a full orbit of Earth. All previous test flights have been suborbital, a choice SpaceX says maximized public safety while still allowing for extensive learning. During this test, Starship will climb to an altitude of 171 miles and circle the planet six times over roughly 10 hours.
Starlink satellites go live
The rocket's upper stage will deploy 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, which will actually begin serving customers this time. On the previous flight, Starship carried V3 satellites for the first time purely as a capability test — those units only extended their solar arrays and antennas to confirm they could communicate with the rest of the Starlink network before burning up in the atmosphere. The V3 satellites can deliver up to 1 Tbps of downlink speed, ten times what V2 satellites offer, and 160 Gbps of uplink, a 22-fold increase over the previous generation.
Unlike some recent flights, SpaceX will not attempt to catch the returning booster with the launch tower's arms this time. The Super Heavy booster will instead splash down in the Gulf of Mexico, renamed the Gulf of America by President Donald Trump in 2025, a few minutes after liftoff. The upper stage will later crash into the Pacific Ocean near Chile once it has completed its objectives. SpaceX plans to stream the launch on its official X account.
