SpaceX is targeting a September 22 launch for its Starship rocket on a 10-hour mission designed to place 26 Starlink V3 satellites into orbit.
The launch is scheduled for 1215 UTC, pending regulatory approval and favorable conditions. If successful, this will mark the first time Starship reaches orbit, with the mission planned to fly at an altitude of approximately 275 km. The flight path includes six orbits, followed by a deorbit burn using a single Raptor engine and a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile.
The Super Heavy booster will be discarded in the Gulf of Mexico, with SpaceX hopeful of achieving better control than on flight 13, when the booster experienced a hard splashdown after only eight of its planned 13 engines reignited. During that flight, all 33 engines were used for the boostback burn, but according to SpaceX, the three center engines showed signs of ice clogging, which triggered an early end to the maneuver.
In keeping with its iterative development approach, SpaceX has modified the hardware to improve filtering and updated the software to enhance relight reliability.
Starship’s heatshield has also been revised, with curved tiles added to reduce heating in tile gaps and additional retention mechanisms installed on tiles in areas considered most at risk of detaching during ascent. A pair of tiles recovered from the previous flight test are also being reused, an important step if Starship is to achieve true reusability.
Reaching orbit is not guaranteed. SpaceX will only initiate the final burn to enter orbit if sufficient hardware redundancy remains to perform a deorbit burn when required, as an uncontrolled reentry of a vehicle the size of Starship would be unacceptable once its orbit eventually decays.
Starship’s test program has been eventful, with some missions achieving spectacular success — including several boosters returning to be caught by arms on the launch tower — while others ended in impressive failures.
The vehicle is central to SpaceX’s future plans, capable of delivering far greater payloads than the company’s Falcon 9 and serving as a key component of NASA’s Artemis program. For Artemis III, planned for 2027, SpaceX is expected to launch a Starship variant equipped with the docking apparatus designed for the lunar lander. Achieving orbit is therefore a critical milestone.
