SpaceX is preparing for Starship Flight 14, which is targeted to launch as soon as Monday, September 28, pending regulatory approval. The company said the 75-minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Flight 14 is planned to mark a major milestone for the Starship program as the first mission designed to send Starship into orbit around Earth. Previous Starship flight tests intentionally followed passively safe suborbital trajectories, while the orbital mission is intended to begin the next stage of SpaceX’s effort to develop Starship into a fully and rapidly reusable transportation system.
The initial orbital mission is expected to fly at an altitude of approximately 275 kilometers above Earth, complete roughly six orbits, and last nearly 10 hours. SpaceX plans for Starship to ultimately splash down in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile.
The mission is also expected to mark the first deployment of Starlink V3 satellites from Starship. SpaceX plans to deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites, with each satellite designed to add approximately 1 Tbps of network capacity. Collectively, the payload would add 26 Tbps of capacity, which SpaceX said is approximately 10 times the capacity delivered by a single Falcon 9 launch carrying V2 Mini Starlink satellites.
After deployment, the Starlink V3 satellites are expected to unfold their antennas and solar arrays before establishing radio-frequency and laser connections with the Starlink constellation. The spacecraft will then use onboard thrusters to raise their orbits, with SpaceX expecting the satellites to potentially begin serving customers within a few weeks after launch.
Three of the satellites have also been modified with camera systems designed to observe Starship’s heat shield while in orbit. The imagery will support SpaceX’s development of methods for determining whether the vehicle’s heat shield is ready for future missions that return Starship to its launch site.
Flight 14 will test several additional heat-shield upgrades based partly on data collected during Flight 13. These include additional tile-retention mechanisms, changes addressing potential plasma flow paths behind tiles, and tests of curved heat-shield tiles designed to reduce heating between tile gaps. SpaceX also plans to refly two tiles recovered from Ship 40 on Ship 41, representing the first reuse of Starship heat-shield tiles.
For the Super Heavy booster, primary objectives include a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and landing burn at an offshore landing point. SpaceX has introduced hardware changes to improve engine filtering and software modifications designed to increase engine relight reliability following issues encountered during Flight 13.
During Flight 13, Super Heavy successfully used all 33 engines during its boostback burn for the first time, but ice clogging affected the three center engines during the terminal portion of the burn. The booster later attempted its landing burn with 8 of the planned 13 engines reigniting before making a hard splashdown.
Starship’s upper-stage objectives include completing its first orbital insertion maneuver, deploying the 26 Starlink V3 satellites, performing a deorbit burn with a single Raptor engine in space, and completing a controlled reentry, descent, and Pacific Ocean splashdown. SpaceX said Starship will only perform the orbital insertion burn after its flight-control team confirms sufficient hardware redundancy to safely execute the later deorbit maneuver.
The planned mission timeline calls for Starship’s orbital insertion burn to begin approximately 25 minutes and 17 seconds after liftoff, with payload deployment beginning around 34 minutes into the mission. Deployment is scheduled to finish at approximately 1 hour and 4 minutes, followed by the deorbit burn nearly 8 hours and 53 minutes after launch.
Starship is then scheduled to begin atmospheric entry at approximately 9 hours and 29 minutes into the flight, followed by its transition through transonic and subsonic flight. The final landing sequence is expected to include a landing burn, landing flip, and progressive reduction from three engines to a single engine before splashdown.
