Elon Musk’s Starship targets first orbital flight with 26 Starlink satellites aboard

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly gearing up to send its Starship rocket into orbit for the very first time. This launch will mark a pivotal moment in the company’s quest to build the world’s most-powerful and reusable launch system. The test flight is said to launch in the coming weeks and will demonstrate whether Starship can achieve orbital velocity and safely return, a milestone Elon Musk has described as essential for future missions to the Moon and Mars. The 14th flight of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as September 28 and the launch window opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (5:45 p.m. IST) and runs for 75 minutes from Starbase, Texas.A first for StarshipEvery Starship flight so far has been suborbital. The rocket has flown 13 times since April 2023, with eight successes and five failures. Flight 14 is meant to change that. Instead of the usual arcing trajectory that ends in an ocean splashdown after about an hour, the upper stage will climb to an altitude of roughly 170 miles (275 km) and circle the Earth about six times before returning.The mission is expected to last around 10 hours from liftoff to splashdown, versus about an hour on earlier tests. SpaceX plans to stream live views of Earth from the ship's onboard cameras during the orbits, and to end the flight with a single-engine deorbit burn and a targeted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.Safety gates before orbitAbout 25 minutes after liftoff, the ship is due to fire one or more of its three vacuum-optimised Raptor 3 engines for an orbital insertion burn lasting roughly 20 seconds. SpaceX has said the ship will only make that burn if the flight control team confirms there is enough redundancy in the hardware needed for the deorbit burn at the end. The company has also lined up contingency splashdown zones in case an early return is needed, and says its abort criteria will be intentionally conservative.A payload of 26 Starlink V3 satellitesStarship is carrying 26 operational Starlink Version 3 satellites to low Earth orbit, the first batch of what SpaceX says will be a fleet of more than 100,000 upgraded spacecraft. Earlier flights carried V3 test payloads, but those came back down quickly because of the suborbital trajectory. Three of the V3 satellites on this flight have cameras to inspect Starship's heat-shield tiles after deployment. Those tiles are essential to the rocket's goal of full reusability.Booster and ship plansThe Super Heavy booster (Booster 21) will follow a familiar path, with a boostback burn, a landing burn and a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX has made several hardware modifications based on lessons from earlier flights and wants to validate them with another sea landing rather than risking a catch at the tower. The ship (Ship 41) will also aim for a soft splashdown rather than a catch, as on the earlier Version 3 flights.The flight follows a rocky summer. Flight 13 lifted off on July 24 after two scrubbed attempts, one of which was aborted when four engines failed to ignite. A wet dress rehearsal on September 24 kept the schedule on track for today.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.