{"id":380,"date":"2026-09-28T20:03:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T20:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=380"},"modified":"2026-09-28T20:03:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T20:03:42","slug":"starship-flight-14-first-orbit-starlink-v3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=380","title":{"rendered":"STARSHIP FINALLY HITS ORBIT! | Flight 14 drops 26 Starlink V3 then cuts short after engine drama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SpaceX&#8217;s Starship finally punched a ticket to orbit. Flight 14 lifted off from Starbase in South Texas around <strong>8:48 a.m. EDT on Sept. 28, 2026<\/strong> \u2014 a Ship Version 3 vehicle on a mission that had been billed as the rocket&#8217;s first real shot at orbital flight, Space.com and Via Satellite reported.<\/p>\n<p>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: <em>&#8220;We are not giving up yet.&#8221;<\/em> About <strong>25 minutes<\/strong> after liftoff, the Ship fired a single Raptor to circularize. Mission control declared, <em>&#8220;Starship is orbital,&#8221;<\/em> and Elon Musk posted: <em>&#8220;First orbital flight of Starship successful!&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Over roughly the next half hour \u2014 starting around <strong>T+34 minutes<\/strong> \u2014 the vehicle deployed <strong>all 26 Starlink V3<\/strong> broadband satellites, the first orbital Starlink payload for Starship (Flight 13&#8217;s V3s were suborbital). The Super Heavy booster had already splashdowned in the Gulf of Mexico about <strong>seven minutes<\/strong> after liftoff.<\/p>\n<p>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 <strong>3 hours 8\u20139 minutes<\/strong> after liftoff, then toppled and exploded on the waves, per Space.com. Starship stands about <strong>407 feet<\/strong> tall; Musk has talked up an eventual ~100,000-satellite Starlink V3 constellation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-exploration\/launches-spacecraft\/spacex-starship-megarocket-flight-14-orbital-launch-success\">Space.com (Mike Wall)<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.satellitetoday.com\/launch\/2026\/09\/28\/spacexs-starship-reaches-orbit-cuts-10-hour-mission-short-after-engine-issue\/\">Via Satellite (Jeffrey Hill)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flight 14 drops 26 Starlink V3 then cuts short after engine drama<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bb-starship-flight14-orbit-0928.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}