SpaceX Plans 14th Starship Test on September 22, 2026, With First Orbital Attempt

SpaceX plans to conduct the 14th test flight of its Starship heavy-lift rocket on September 22, 2026, in the first attempt to fly Starship in Earth orbit and place 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites into orbit. The launch window opens at 7:15 a. m. Central Time on September 22 and lasts 75 minutes, corresponding to 8:15 p. Beijing time on September 22. Starship will lift off from a launch site in southern Texas.

During the orbital mission, Starship will fly at an altitude of about 275 kilometers above Earth's surface for roughly 10 hours, completing about six orbits, and is ultimately planned to splash down in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile. SpaceX said previous Starship test flights were suborbital, while this one will be the first attempt at orbital flight.

The Starship rocket is about 120 meters long and about 9 meters in diameter, and consists of two parts: a first-stage Super Heavy booster about 70 meters long and a second-stage Starship spacecraft. The rocket is designed to carry people and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon and eventually Mars.

Starship's previous test flight took place on July 24, 2026. In that mission, the second-stage spacecraft completed its planned flight and made a controlled splashdown in a designated area of the Indian Ocean, but the first-stage booster experienced a problem during its landing burn and ultimately fell into the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX completed an initial public offering and listed in June 2026, and its first Starship test mission after that took place in July, when Starship successfully released V3 Starlink satellites. Those satellites were mainly used to verify satellite deployment capability and were not intended to remain in orbit long term; instead, they re-entered the atmosphere and burned up about 20 minutes after entering space.

The September 22, 2026, mission will genuinely attempt to send the Starship upper stage into Earth orbit and have it perform an orbital mission. The mission will not attempt to complete the full Starship recovery process; SpaceX will not attempt to catch the Starship upper stage directly with the launch tower's mechanical arms, nor will it attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster. In response to the problem during the 13th mission, when the Super Heavy booster attempted to reignite after separating from the Starship upper stage, SpaceX said it has made multiple hardware and software changes to the Super Heavy booster used for this mission.

The Starship upper stage from the 13th flight did not explode immediately after falling into the water and tipping over. SpaceX subsequently spent several months recovering the upper stage and towed it back to its Texas headquarters for inspection. Engineering teams obtained a large amount of data by studying the recovered vehicle and used it to further adjust Starship's thermal protection system. SpaceX said the Starship used for the 14th flight has additional improvements to its heat shield based on experience from previous tests.

The cost of this launch and the related revenue ultimately come from different business units within SpaceX. If the mission is completed successfully, it will be Starship's first commercial payload mission. SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has previously said that only after Starship can achieve reliable flights several times a week will the company gradually phase out the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, in order to concentrate limited engineering and production resources on the Starship platform.