SpaceX’s SPCX.O Starship finally crossed a milestone the company has chased for years, reaching orbit for the first time today even after an unexpected mid-flight engine shutdown — a scare it overcame to deploy its first batch of next-generation Starlink satellites before a shortened mission wrapped hours ahead of schedule.
Analysts predicted the successful deployment would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars in extra revenue for Elon Musk’s company.
The uncrewed, 40-story-tall system — a Super Heavy booster carrying the upper-stage Starship vehicle — roared away from SpaceX’s Starbase facility on the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville.
Planned as a 10-hour flight, the mission was cut to three hours because of the engine issue.
Today’s launch marked Starship’s 14th flight since 2023, part of SpaceX’s push to move the rocket into routine operations later this year.
Starship blasts off on its first orbital flight
SpaceX shares, which were up nearly 9% from the already substantial IPO price, were down about 1% today.
After boosting Starship toward space, the Super Heavy stage separated and headed back toward Gulf waters for an engine-controlled splashdown — a cleaner outcome than the hard landings recorded for the booster on the two prior missions.
During the booster’s descent, however, some of its engines stopped working, SpaceX said.
‘Hourly flights’ in next few years – Musk
Once the upper stage reached space, one of Starship’s three main engines shut down earlier than intended. On the company’s live stream, SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said the failure meant the craft would not be able to make it to orbit.
“The team has made the call not to commit to orbit,” Mr Huot said.
Minutes later, after engineers provided updated analysis, Huot reversed that assessment and said Starship could still attempt the engine firing needed to raise its trajectory — a burn Starship then completed successfully, sending it into orbit.
From orbit, Starship released 26 next-generation Starlink satellites individually at an altitude of about 269 km.
“All 26 Starlink V3 operational satellites deployed and operating nominally,” Elon Musk wrote on X.
All 26 Starlink V3 operational satellites deployed and operating nominally
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 28, 2026
Starship was built to increase the cadence of SpaceX’s Starlink deployments and to support future NASA missions to the moon.
For any new rocket meant to carry payloads, achieving orbit is a defining benchmark — and for Starship it has been a long-delayed one. Musk had once said the vehicle would reach orbit in 2022 and begin deploying satellites in 2023.
Instead, Starship’s 13 earlier test flights since 2023 stayed on suborbital trajectories, despite a development effort spanning nearly a decade and costing SpaceX more than $15 billion so far.
Musk has said he ultimately wants Starship flying hundreds or even thousands of missions annually — a tempo with no precedent in the space industry.
“Starship is 2 to 3 years away from hourly flights,” he wrote on X on Sunday.
Analysts estimate today’s laucnch could help generate hundreds of millions of dollars of extra revenue for Space X
Starship had been expected to circle Earth six times today before the plan was scaled back.
The engine trouble heightened the importance of another key task: a successful deorbit. That maneuver depends on firing one Raptor engine in space to precisely orient the spacecraft for atmospheric re-entry.
The ship has three main Raptor engines.
For its final controlled descent, Starship is designed to use thrusters to flip into a vertical attitude so it strikes the sea in a nose-up position.
Although later missions are intended to attempt a comparable touchdown on land back in Texas, no recovery attempt is planned for this flight — a shift from Musk’s earlier hopes.
Test mission with real payload
SpaceX counted today’s outing as the 14th Starship test flight.
Even so, it carried a cluster of new Starlink internet satellites, making this the first time Starship has flown an orbital payload.
Analysts estimate the launch of SpaceX’s new V3 Starlink satellites equals hundreds of millions of dollars in projected revenue for the company’s Starlink unit, based on the network’s added customer capacity — underscoring Starship’s fundamental role in serving the company’s profit nucleus.
SpaceX says the V3 Starlink satellites on Monday’s mission can process 10 times more data than the earlier V2 mini satellites the company has been lofting in groups of 20 or 30 on its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets.
To accelerate construction of its broadband constellation, Musk wants to send the higher-capacity V3 satellites up in batches of 60 per launch once Starship enters regular service.
The orbital milestone arrives three months after SpaceX went public in a record-setting IPO in June, a debut that made it the sixth-biggest US company by value and turned Musk — who founded SpaceX in 2002 — into the world’s first trillionaire.
SpaceX’s market value and investor confidence — pegged at $2 trillion as of Friday’s close — hinge heavily on Starship, which was designed to be the world’s first fully reusable spacecraft.
Starship also is slated to be central to NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon’s surface for the first time since 1972 and establish a sustained lunar presence as a stepping stone toward eventual human missions to Mars.
