Starship to Attempt First Orbital Flight Next Week

SpaceX will attempt to put Starship into orbit for the first time next week pending regulatory approval. If all goes according to plan, Integrated Flight Test-14 or IFT-14 will orbit Earth six times, dropping off 26 Starlink V3 satellites before splashing down in the ocean west of Chile. The company is targeting Tuesday for the launch.

Starship has experienced a lot of ups and downs — literally and figuratively — since the first launch on April 17, 2023 which ended quickly in a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly or RUD. The three spectacular “catches” of the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower certainly rank among the highs and the two Starship explosions over the Caribbean among the lows. SpaceX has persevered throughout with a “fail fast, learn faster” philosophy.

The name Starship is often used for the entire system although officially the first stage is named Super Heavy and only the second stage is Starship.

Previous flight tests have traveled through space to reach the Indian Ocean, but none have entered orbit.

Next week’s Super Heavy/Starship launch will be the third of its new design, V3, introduced in May. The Raptor engines are also V3, as well as the Starlink satellites. Perhaps 3 will be a lucky number next week. The 75-minute launch window is open from 8:15 am-9:30 am EDT, a return to a morning flight.

The goal is orbit, but SpaceX says they will only attempt to do that once they are certain there’s sufficient redundancy on critical hardware to ensure they can perform a deorbit burn at the end of the flight.

“The Starship upper stage’s primary objectives include the first orbital insertion maneuver, the deployment of 26 Starlink V3 satellites, a deorbit burn using a single Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry, descent, and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Starship will only execute a burn to enter orbit after the flight control team has ensured there is sufficient redundancy on hardware critical to doing the subsequent deorbit burn at the end of the mission.” — SpaceX

Starship is a very large spacecraft and an uncontrolled reentry from orbit would pose significant risks to areas under its flight path.

That orbital insertion burn starts 25 minutes 28 seconds after liftoff and ends 19 seconds later according to SpaceX’s timeline. Starlink deployments begin at 35:18 into flight and end at 1:04:50. The next milestone is at 8:52:18 when the deorbit burn begins, with splashdown at 9:50:30 elasped time. If launch is at 8:15 am EDT, that would be 6:05:30 pm EDT.

SpaceX caught the Super Heavy booster back at the Starbase launch tower on IFT-5, IFT-7 and IFT-8, but hasn’t attempted it since with the booster landing in the Gulf instead. They won’t this time either. On IFT-12 and IFT-13, the first two launches of V3, some of the Raptor engines didn’t perform as expected during the boost-back and landing burns. Hardware and software modifications have been made for this flight.

Starship is the future of SpaceX’s launch business. Founder and CEO Elon Musk confirmed last month that Falcon 9, the company’s workhorse launcher that just completed its 700th overall mission, will be discontinued once Starship is flying routinely. It underpins SpaceX’s own business plans of launching Starlink satellites and Orbital Data Centers, as well as NASA’s Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon using the Human Landing System version. Reaching orbit is a critical step for both.