Starship Reaches Orbit for the First Time, Despite an Engine Loss

SpaceX's Starship reached Earth orbit for the first time early Monday morning after launching from South Texas. The flight, called Flight 14, lifted off in a window scheduled to open at 8:15 a.m. ET on September 28, 2026, according to live launch coverage CNN.

The ascent was not clean. The Starship upper stage, the top part of the vehicle that continues to orbit, lost one of its six Raptor engines shortly after separating from the booster. SpaceX first called off the orbital attempt after the loss, then decided minutes later to continue, according to flight reporting TechCrunch.

That reversal fits how the flight was set up. Starship first flew a passively safe suborbital path, a track that would fall back harmlessly if controllers did nothing, while teams checked systems before approving the trip to orbit SpaceX. The final push into orbit was to use only a single Raptor engine SpaceX. With five of six engines still working, the vehicle kept enough margin for that burn and for steering in orbit.

The planned test was long. The upper stage was to circle Earth six times over nine hours and release 26 third-generation Starlink satellites, SpaceX's internet-relay spacecraft TechCrunch. A preflight briefing put the expected duration at nearly 10 hours CNN. The starting orbital altitude was expected to be about 275 km, per SpaceX flight data.

The Super Heavy booster, the large lower stage, separated a few minutes into flight and headed back toward the Gulf Coast for a simulated landing over water. SpaceX described that simulated catch and splashdown as the cleanest it has flown with the V3 version of Starship, the latest design it started testing in May.

Flight 14 had been targeted for as early as Tuesday, September 22, pending regulatory approval. The slip to September 28 kept a Monday morning window and kept the test pace moving after a summer spent checking out V3. The plan to carry the first upgraded Starlink satellites dates to August planning.

Starting with Flight 14, Starship will begin flying orbital missions to deliver Starlink V3 satellites and other payloads to space. The vehicle is designed to carry more than 100 metric tonnes to orbit in a fully reusable configuration, meaning both stages are built to fly again.

The broader context here is a shift from proving Starship can climb to proving it can do useful work in orbit. An engine loss just after staging would have ended many test campaigns, or forced a backup orbit. Starship stayed on its safe holding path while controllers checked its health, then committed to orbit on a single engine. In my view, that handling of failure matters more than the satellite count on this flight. It tested backup design, ground decision-making, and long upper-stage operation at once.

Worth flagging for what comes next is duration and reuse. Six orbits over nine hours test fuel management, temperature control, power, and handoffs between ground stations in ways short hops do not. A clean simulated booster return, paired with a V3 upper stage that lost an engine and still reached orbit, gives SpaceX data it can apply directly to cargo flights, faster Starlink V3 deployment, and eventual rapid reuse. I have watched this pattern before, from expendable rockets to workhorse launchers. Systems start fragile, then learn to absorb failures, then fly often. Starship just moved one step further along that path.