SpaceX plans Starship’s first orbital flight next week

After 13 test flights that never left the neighborhood, Starship is finally aiming for the real thing. SpaceX has targeted no earlier than September 22 for Flight 14, the first attempt to put its fully integrated Starship vehicle into a stable low Earth orbit. The mission profile calls for the upper stage, known simply as Ship, to reach an altitude of roughly 275 kilometers, complete approximately six orbits, and spend close to 10 hours in space before a controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile. What Flight 14 actually involves The launch window opens at approximately 7:15 a.m. Central Time, or 12:15 UTC, and runs for 75 minutes. SpaceX will fly from its Starbase facility in South Texas, the same site that has hosted every prior integrated test flight. Beyond the orbital milestone itself, Flight 14 carries a real commercial payload: 26 Starlink V3 satellites. These are larger and higher-capacity than the V2 mini variants that have populated the existing constellation, and getting them into operational orbit is a business objective as much as an engineering one. SpaceX has filed the relevant FCC paperwork for orbital operations, and the flight also requires FAA appro...