Starship Finally Reaches Orbit: SpaceX's Giant Rocket Makes History

After three years and 13 tries, SpaceX's Starship has finally done it. On Monday, September 28, 2026, the most powerful rocket ever built roared off its Texas launch pad and achieved something no previous Starship had managed: a full lap — nearly two — around the Earth, delivering 26 next-generation Starlink satellites along the way before coming home early out of caution.

A SpaceX Starship lifts off from Starbase, Texas, on an earlier test flight. On Sept. 28, 2026, Flight 14 became the first Starship to reach full orbit.

A Mission Three Years in the Making

Starship Flight 14 lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase complex on the Texas Gulf Coast at 7:50 a.m. Central Time, riding a Super Heavy booster powered by 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines. At 407 feet tall — taller than the Statue of Liberty — the stack generates roughly 16 million pounds of thrust, about twice the power of NASA's Space Launch System, according to CBS News.

The climb did not go perfectly. One of the booster's 33 Raptor engines shut down prematurely during ascent. Despite the loss, the rocket pressed on, and the Super Heavy booster executed a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico a few miles off the Texas coast. This flight made no attempt to catch the booster with the launch tower's arms — a maneuver SpaceX has said is planned for a future flight.

Then came the tense moment. A Raptor vacuum engine on the Starship upper stage also suffered an early shutdown during the first burn. For several minutes, SpaceX's flight team debated whether to commit to orbit at all, or to end the flight there without deploying the payload. The remaining engines burned longer to compensate, and with the three sea-level engines needed for the orbital burns healthy, mission control made the call.

"Starship is orbital," the mission controller declared — and the SpaceX crowd watching the live feed erupted in cheers. Flight 14 was the 14th full-scale Starship launch since 2023, and every one before it had flown a suborbital path, briefly skimming space before falling back to Earth, often in flames. This time, the giant ship was genuinely flying around the world.

A Pez-Dispenser Payload: 26 New Starlinks

With Starship safely circling the planet at roughly 17,500 miles per hour, the mission hit its biggest commercial milestone. The ship's satellite deployer opened its doors at an altitude of about 160 miles and pushed out 26 Starlink V3 satellites one after another — working, as one report put it, like a giant Pez dispenser.

It was the first time Starship had carried an operational payload all the way to orbit — and the first revenue-producing Starship launch for SpaceX. SpaceX confirmed contact with all 26 satellites. These are the most advanced Starlinks yet: according to SpaceX, each V3 satellite provides about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity, roughly 10 times the capacity of the previous-generation V2 Mini satellites carried by Falcon 9. SpaceX has said a mature Starship could eventually deploy up to 60 of them per flight — more than 20 times the network capacity of a single Falcon 9 Starlink launch.

It was also a moment of redemption. Back in July, an earlier test flight had attempted to deploy V3 satellites, but because that flight never reached orbit, the satellites re-entered the atmosphere and burned up after only a series of tests. This time, the deployment worked exactly as designed.

A Shorter, Safer Return Home

But the flight ended sooner than planned — deliberately. The original mission called for a nearly 10-hour endurance run: six full orbits around the Earth ending with a splashdown in the Pacific off the coast of Chile, a key demonstration for the moon missions ahead.

After the engine troubles, SpaceX decided not to risk it. In an update issued hours after launch, the company said the flight was shortened "out of an abundance of caution." The ship performed its deorbit burn roughly two hours and 12 minutes into the flight and came down over the northern Pacific, splashing down north of Hawaii about three hours after liftoff.

The landing was rough but survivable. Starship set down tail-first, then tipped over and erupted in flames upon hitting the ocean — a dramatic end that nevertheless kept all debris far from populated land. No recovery of the ship was planned. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has been blunt about the caution: at a business summit earlier this month, he said that if Starship ever broke apart over land and rained debris on people, "our popularity would diminish very rapidly," adding, "that's why we're being extremely cautious here."

Even so, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman congratulated the team, calling it a "gorgeous launch" and praising SpaceX for managing every step "in a safe, responsible and especially inspirational way."

An illustration of Starlink satellites in orbit. Flight 14 deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites — the first operational payload Starship has carried to orbit.

What This Means

Flight 14 is the most important Starship milestone since the program began. For three years, the ship climbed toward space and fell back without ever completing a single orbit — a pattern that fueled critics who questioned whether the enormous rocket would ever graduate from fireworks to freight.

Now the answer is in. Starship is orbital, and it carried paying payload there. The engine failures during this flight are precisely what test programs exist to catch: the booster lost an engine and still flew a clean trajectory; the ship lost an engine and still made orbit. The vehicle demonstrated the kind of fault tolerance a future crew and moon lander will demand — and then, critically, the flight team chose the conservative option over the spectacular one.

The timing matters. SpaceX is under contract with NASA to provide the Starship lander for the Artemis program's planned crewed return to the Moon, and NASA has been watching these test flights closely as a gauge of whether the world's most powerful rocket can become the world's most reliable one.

Starship on a previous test flight. Flight 14 ended its mission early with a splashdown in the Pacific north of Hawaii.

What Happens Next

The program now shifts to proving it can come home in one piece. No Starship has yet been recovered, and full, rapid reusability — the economic promise at the heart of the entire project — remains unproven. SpaceX has signaled that a future flight will attempt to fly the ship back to Starbase and catch it with the launch tower's arms, the maneuver already rehearsed with boosters.

More orbital flights will follow, carrying more Starlink V3 satellites to expand the constellation's capacity — and generating the revenue that funds the bigger dream. With the orbital barrier broken, each subsequent flight becomes less about "will it reach orbit" and more about "how cheaply and quickly can it do it again."

Three years of suborbital hops are over. Starship is finally, officially, a spaceship.