Starlink beamed live video from SpaceX’s Starship back to Earth on Monday as the ship orbited the planet for the first time in program history during Flight 14, which lifted off from Starbase, Texas carrying 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
Flight 14 marked the first Starship mission planned to reach orbit, and SpaceX said Monday the vehicle completed its orbital insertion burn to get there. The company then published live views of Starship in orbit, with the real-time video feed brought to viewers by Starlink. The 54-second clip shows the vehicle coasting above Earth as the mission continued. Starlink’s own account shared the footage with a note celebrating the real-time link.
Starlink said Monday the 26 V3 satellites aboard the flight will add up to 26 terabits of capacity to the constellation, an order-of-magnitude improvement the company says will connect more people with better service. Streaming live video from orbit also serves as a working demo for Starlink’s space-to-space relay ambitions, a capability Elon Musk has tied to his forecast that the network will eventually carry most of Earth’s internet traffic.
Earlier Starship test flights gave Starlink a chance to push its own limits, including an altitude and speed record set during a previous flight.
Flight 14 is planned as a roughly three-hour orbital mission. SpaceX said Monday flight teams will deorbit Starship into a pre-cleared area of the Pacific Ocean after about three hours in orbit, wrapping up the first mission to take the vehicle around the planet on September 28.
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