SpaceX's Starship reaches orbit for the first time after 14 test flights

SpaceX put its Starship rocket into orbit around Earth for the first time on Monday, a milestone the company had chased across fourteen integrated test flights and more than five years of development, and one that Washington is watching closely because a variant of the same vehicle is supposed to land NASA astronauts on the moon.

The 400-foot-tall Super Heavy-Starship stack lifted off at 8:49 a.m. Eastern time from SpaceX's Starbase launch site on the Texas Gulf Coast, its 33 booster engines generating some 16 million pounds of thrust — roughly twice the power of NASA's own Space Launch System moon rocket. Roughly half an hour later, after a brief scare when one of the ship's six Raptor engines shut down early, the upper stage reached low Earth orbit and released 26 next-generation Starlink satellites, the first operational payload the rocket has ever carried.

What happened

Flight 14 was the third outing for Starship's overhauled "Version 3" hardware and the fourteenth integrated test of the vehicle since SpaceX began flying it in 2023. The Super Heavy booster's 33 Raptor engines ignited without incident and pushed the rocket off the pad, followed by hot-staging, in which the upper stage's engines fire while still attached to the spent booster. Shortly after separation, one of Starship's six Raptor engines cut out prematurely during the climb to an initially suborbital trajectory. After assessing telemetry, flight controllers judged the vehicle was otherwise healthy and pressed ahead, completing a second burn on a single Raptor engine that pushed the ship the rest of the way into orbit.

The plan had called for a roughly six-orbit flight ending with a splashdown off the coast of Chile around 6:40 p.m. Instead, with the satellites safely deployed, SpaceX's mission managers brought the ship down early, ending the flight about three hours after liftoff with a tail-first, controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii, at 11:57 a.m. Eastern time; as with earlier test flights, the spent vehicle tipped over and exploded as residual propellant ignited. The Super Heavy booster, meanwhile, suffered a second engine shutdown of its own during its boost-back burn but still executed what SpaceX described as a seemingly normal vertical splashdown in the Gulf a few miles offshore. The company did not attempt to catch the booster with the launch tower's mechanical arms on this flight, a feat it has managed four times on earlier missions; catching the ship itself has not yet been attempted at all.

The numbers

The 26 satellites deployed on Monday were third-generation Starlink V3 spacecraft, which SpaceX says carry roughly ten times the data capacity of earlier versions, and their release marked the first time Starship has delivered an operational payload to orbit rather than flying an inert mass simulator. The rocket reached an orbit roughly 180 miles (290 kilometers) up. It was also the first flight of Starship's "Block 3" design to fly a full ascent, descent and payload sequence in one mission, after the upgraded vehicle debuted on flight 12 in May. Across all fourteen integrated flights to date, SpaceX counts nine that met their major test objectives against five that ended in the loss of the vehicle, a tally that includes two dramatic in-flight breakups in 2025 that temporarily grounded the program while investigators, working with the Federal Aviation Administration, traced the failures to propellant leaks and fixed them in the Block 3 redesign.

How SpaceX got here

Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown, designed by SpaceX to be fully reusable and to eventually carry both cargo and crew to the moon and Mars. The first two integrated test flights, in 2023, ended in the destruction of the vehicle within minutes of liftoff. Flight 5, in October 2024, delivered the first successful catch of a returning Super Heavy booster by the launch tower's arms, a maneuver SpaceX had pitched as essential to rapid, airline-style reuse. Later flights alternated between successful booster catches and upper-stage failures, including two ships that broke apart mid-flight in 2025, prompting a redesign of the vehicle's propellant lines and engine bay that became the current Block 3 version. That version first flew in May 2026 and, until Monday, had not carried the ship all the way to a stable orbit. Spaceflight Now's account of Monday's mission noted that flight 14 was also the first to run a full ascent-to-splashdown sequence without a major structural failure on either stage, a distinction none of the previous Block 3 flights had achieved.

Who is affected

The most immediate stakeholder is NASA, which has contracted with SpaceX to build a lunar-lander variant of Starship for its Artemis program. The agency's current plan calls for a Starship-derived lander to put astronauts on the moon's south pole for the Artemis IV mission, targeted for 2028; before that, four astronauts are due to fly in an Orion capsule next year on Artemis III, a mission that will attempt to rendezvous and dock in low Earth orbit with prototype landers launched separately by SpaceX and by Blue Origin, which NASA is funding as a backup in case Starship falls behind schedule. Reaching orbit on Monday brings SpaceX no closer, by itself, to the harder milestone still ahead: demonstrating that Starships can transfer cryogenic propellant to one another in space, since a crewed lunar lander will need roughly 15 tanker flights to refuel it before it can head to the moon. SpaceX's Starlink division is also a direct beneficiary: the V3 satellites deployed on Monday are the newest, highest-capacity generation of the broadband constellation, and Starship's far larger cargo volume compared with the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket is central to SpaceX's plan to scale up satellite internet coverage and, eventually, direct-to-phone service.

Reaction

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, a former commercial astronaut who has flown to orbit aboard SpaceX capsules, congratulated the company within minutes of the splashdown, writing on X that NASA was "excited to help where we can and for Starship missions to become routine."

"Congrats @SpaceX! Gorgeous launch, getting Ship to orbit and managing every step in a safe, responsible, and especially inspirational way." — NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman

NPR's coverage of the mission noted the engine shutdown created a tense moment before flight controllers pressed ahead with the orbital attempt. Space reporters following the flight were more measured about what lies ahead: few doubt SpaceX will eventually get Super Heavy-Starship flying reliably, but it remains unclear whether the company can meet NASA's 2028 target for the first crewed Starship moon landing, and aerospace-industry observers with experience at NASA have voiced open skepticism about that timeline.

What happens next

SpaceX has not announced a date for the next Starship flight. CBS News's report on the mission noted that SpaceX currently operates two Super Heavy-Starship pads at Starbase and has three more under construction in Florida — one at Kennedy Space Center's historic pad 39A and two at the adjacent Cape Canaveral Space Force Station — with an initial Florida launch targeted for late this year or early next; multiple pads will be needed to support the tanker cadence NASA's moon architecture requires. Before any crewed landing can be scheduled, SpaceX must still demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer in orbit and prove the vehicle can be certified safe to carry astronauts, on top of the roughly 15 refueling flights a single lunar mission would require in quick succession. NASA, for its part, is hedging: alongside SpaceX's Starship-based lander, the agency is funding a competing lunar lander from Blue Origin, and next year's Artemis III mission will test docking with prototype landers from both companies in low Earth orbit before any lunar landing is attempted. For now, Monday's flight gives the program its clearest evidence yet that the redesigned Block 3 vehicle can survive the trip to orbit — even with an engine down — and get most of the way back to Earth in one piece.