Starship Reaches Orbit for the First Time, Returns Early After Engine Failures

Liftoff from Starbase, Texas, came at 8:48 a.m. ET. The upper stage reached orbit roughly 25 minutes later. Mission control announced "Starship is orbital," according to The Next Web's account of the webcast. It was the first time in 14 attempts that the vehicle completed a full orbital insertion rather than a suborbital hop.

The flight nearly did not happen as planned. One of the six engines on the upper stage shut down during the climb. SpaceX's Dan Huot told webcast viewers the company had called off the orbit attempt, then reversed the call minutes later, The Next Web reported.

The Super Heavy booster made a simulated landing in the Gulf of Mexico, but one of its 33 engines failed on the way up and a second did not relight for the turnaround, according to The New York Times.

SpaceX had planned about six orbits at roughly 275km, a flight of nearly 10 hours and a splashdown west of Chile. Instead, the company said on X it would bring Starship down in a pre-cleared area of the Pacific after three hours in orbit. The early return was due to the engine problems, The New York Times reported. CNBC put the splashdown at about 10:58 a.m. local time.

Twenty-six satellites, and a capacity claim

All 26 Starlink V3 satellites were released, and SpaceX said its Starlink team made contact with each one. Every V3 satellite adds 1 terabit per second of capacity, according to SpaceX's mission page cited by The Next Web. That is about 10 times what one Falcon 9 launch of older satellites adds. Three of the 26 carry cameras to inspect Starship's heat shield.

CNBC reported that a single Starship can carry 60 of the V3 satellites, roughly 20 times the capacity of a Falcon 9 launch. The new satellites, produced at a SpaceX facility in Redmond, Washington, have solar arrays that generate twice as much power as prior generations. They are larger and designed to transmit data more rapidly to Starlink subscribers.

The stakes are commercial as much as technical. SpaceX went public in June in the largest IPO on record and is now valued at about $2 trillion, CNBC reported. Starlink was the company's largest and only profitable segment as of the second quarter. SpaceX operates around 11,000 active satellites in orbit today, compared to roughly 650 for competitor Eutelsat OneWeb.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on X: "Gorgeous launch, getting Ship to orbit and managing every step in a safe, responsible, and especially inspirational way." NASA plans to use a version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon under its Artemis programme, and the company is preparing the vehicle for a major NASA test flight next year.

Amazon's rival constellation stalls

The orbital milestone lands at an awkward moment for Amazon's competing Leo constellation. The Verge reported on 28 September that it has been 12 weeks since Amazon's last successful Leo deployment, 29 satellites carried into orbit aboard United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket on 2 July. That brings Leo's launched total to 396, far below the over 11,000 satellites Starlink currently has in operation, or even the 552 Starlink satellites that have launched since 2 July.

Amazon's launch partners are largely to blame. Vulcan, ULA's successor to the retiring Atlas V, has been grounded by the US Space Force since February 2026 following a booster anomaly that is still under investigation. Blue Origin's New Glenn has also been grounded since its only launchpad was destroyed in May. Earlier this month Amazon ordered six additional launches from Arianespace's A64 heavy lift rocket, bringing its total contracted launches from 18 to 24, but that vehicle faces delays following issues with an unspecified Ariane 6 component expected to disrupt launches "for the remainder of 2026."

Amazon has already received an extension for its FCC deadline to launch half of its planned 3,232 satellites, with the condition that it needs to move quickly. The company previously said the almost 400 satellites it has in operation are enough to switch on a limited version of its internet service, but the "mid-2026" deadline it set for commercial availability has passed with no update.

SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell said during the All-In Summit earlier this month that the company also plans to use Starship to put "supercompute in space," launching "AI compute satellites" into orbit in 2027. Google plans to put its first AI chips into orbit on a Falcon 9 rideshare on 1 October, and India's TakeMe2Space plans to launch an AI computing satellite on a SpaceX rocket the same day, The Next Web reported.

Power for those orbital data centres is its own problem. WIRED reported on 28 September that Star Catcher, a Jacksonville startup, is preparing to launch a prototype this week aboard a SpaceX rocket that will beam laser energy to an untethered cubesat. If successful, it would be the first time lasers have beamed energy between two untethered objects in space. The company announced a $65 million funding round earlier this year and won a $30 million award from the US Space Force, and has signed 10 power purchase agreements.

On the science side, a separate result published on 28 September points to a more mundane risk of long-duration flight. Research from the University of Copenhagen, conducted with NASA, analysed blood samples from 52 astronauts who spent months aboard the International Space Station and found signs that gut bacteria begin fermenting protein to a greater extent than usual within weeks of arrival.

"The lack of gravity in space probably causes food to move more slowly through the intestine, and this fits with the fact that we are seeing signs of increased protein fermentation. This may also help explain constipation in astronauts," said co-author Henrik Roager.

Senior author Lars Ove Dragsted said products of protein fermentation are often associated with negative health consequences such as kidney damage, potential effects on mood or reduced ability to focus. Giorgia La Barbera, joint first author, said countermeasures may be needed to mitigate negative effects on the intestines on longer journeys such as a mission to Mars.

SpaceX has not yet demonstrated the reusability and reliability of the Starship Super Heavy system, CNBC noted. Musk had previously said Starship would reach orbit in 2022 and begin deploying satellites in 2023. In November 2024 he said SpaceX would be conducting at least one Starship flight every two weeks by the end of 2025. Monday showed progress against those goals, and a reminder of how much of the system remains unproven.