SpaceX to attempt first Starship orbital flight on September 22

SpaceX will attempt to put Starship’s upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time during the mega-rocket’s 14th test flight, the company announced Tuesday. The launch is scheduled for September 22, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT. SpaceX plans to use the flight to deploy the first batch of third-generation Starlink satellites into its network of 10,000 internet satellites, expecting to launch 26 V3 satellites in this test. If successful, it would be the first Starship launch to generate revenue for SpaceX’s launch division, even though that revenue would come from another division of the company.

This will be the second Starship test since SpaceX went public in June in the largest IPO in history. The first, in July, successfully deployed V3 Starlink satellites for the first time, though that flight was only meant to test deployment capability and the stage burned up in the atmosphere after roughly 20 minutes.

Reaching orbit would mark a major milestone for a program that has cost SpaceX billions of dollars, as the company looks to retire its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets in favor of Starship — something CEO Elon Musk has said will happen once Starship flies reliably several times a week, freeing up scarce engineering and production resources. That reuse cadence, promised during the IPO process, requires Starship to reliably reach orbit, return to Earth, and fly again quickly; this 14th flight tests only the first part of that chain. Musk recently walked back earlier talk of catching the upper stage with the launch tower on this flight, saying an explosion would be too big a setback right now, and SpaceX won’t attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster either.

The booster has struggled on recent flights, including failing to properly relight its engines after separating from the upper stage on Flight 13 in July, and SpaceX says it has made further hardware and software modifications to address those issues. The upper stage fared much better on Flight 13: it didn’t reach orbit, but flew smoothly through a simulated landing in the Indian Ocean and didn’t explode when it tipped into the water, letting SpaceX spend months recovering and towing it back to Texas. SpaceX says it has since made additional changes to Starship’s heat shield based on studying that recovered stage.

Why it matters

An actual orbital Starship flight would be SpaceX’s clearest proof yet that it can deliver the rapid, reusable launch cadence it promised investors during its record IPO, rather than just repeated test flights.