SpaceX’s Starship finally punched a ticket to orbit. Flight 14 lifted off from Starbase in South Texas around 8:48 a.m. EDT on Sept. 28, 2026 — a Ship Version 3 vehicle on a mission that had been billed as the rocket’s first real shot at orbital flight, Space.com and Via Satellite reported.
The ride up was messy. One of six Ship engines dropped out during ascent. SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot briefly told observers the orbit attempt was called off, then reversed course: “We are not giving up yet.” About 25 minutes after liftoff, the Ship fired a single Raptor to circularize. Mission control declared, “Starship is orbital,” and Elon Musk posted: “First orbital flight of Starship successful!”
Over roughly the next half hour — starting around T+34 minutes — the vehicle deployed all 26 Starlink V3 broadband satellites, the first orbital Starlink payload for Starship (Flight 13’s V3s were suborbital). The Super Heavy booster had already splashdowned in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff.
The plan was ~6 orbits and a ~9-hour-50-minute Chile splashdown. Engine trouble cut that short: the Ship came down in the northern Pacific about 3 hours 8–9 minutes after liftoff, then toppled and exploded on the waves, per Space.com. Starship stands about 407 feet tall; Musk has talked up an eventual ~100,000-satellite Starlink V3 constellation.
Sources: Space.com (Mike Wall); Via Satellite (Jeffrey Hill)
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