SpaceX Details Starship Flight 14 First Orbit and 26 Starlink V3s

Starship Flight 14 mission art. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX has published the official Starship Flight 14 mission page, targeting a NET Tuesday, September 22, 2026, liftoff from Starbase pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window that opens at 7:15 a.m. Central Time. The company frames the flight as Starship’s first planned mission into orbit around Earth, after prior tests stayed on intentionally suborbital trajectories.

On the profile SpaceX posted, Ship is expected to fly at roughly 275 km altitude, complete about six orbits over a nearly 10-hour flight, and splash down in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile. The Super Heavy booster’s objectives cover launch, ascent, hot staging, a boostback burn, a landing burn, and an offshore Gulf landing, with hardware and software changes aimed at issues seen after Flight 13.

Ship’s primary objectives include the first orbital insertion maneuver, deployment of 26 Starlink V3 satellites, a single-Raptor in-space deorbit burn, and a controlled reentry, descent, and splashdown. SpaceX says each V3 adds 1 Tbps of constellation capacity, or 26 Tbps on this mission alone, about 10x the capacity of a Falcon 9 V2 mini Starlink launch. The stack is set to enter orbit only after flight controllers confirm enough redundancy for that later deorbit burn.

That official write-up goes beyond this morning’s FAA airspace window note for September 22 and sits beside Musk’s Flight 15 ship-catch odds talk. Treat NET September 22 as SpaceX’s public target still gated on regulatory approval, stack readiness, weather, and range, not a locked countdown clock.