SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time on Monday, Reuters reported, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites on the vehicle’s 14th test flight after one of its six upper-stage engines failed roughly two and a half minutes into the mission. The Super Heavy booster ignited all 33 of its engines at 7:48 a.m. CT from SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas, sending the 40-story vehicle over the Gulf of Mexico before Starship separated and continued alone toward orbit.
SpaceX’s live stream initially reported the mission could not reach orbit after the engine loss. Spokesperson Dan Huot reversed that assessment about 22 minutes into the flight, once engineers confirmed Starship could still complete the burn needed to reach orbital velocity, roughly 17,500 miles per hour.
Orbit had eluded Starship since Musk first targeted the milestone for 2022. All 13 of the vehicle’s previous flights since 2023 stayed suborbital, over a development program that has cost SpaceX more than $15 billion to date.
The Super Heavy booster skipped its usual tower-catch landing to instead simulate a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, testing software and hardware changes bound for future flights. Starship itself is set to complete six orbits over 10 hours before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off Chile, carrying three Starlink satellites fitted with cameras to record how its heat shield handles reentry.
SpaceX’s plan to fly Starship “hundreds or thousands” of times a year, in Musk’s own words, is running into the same power-equipment shortage now squeezing utilities and data center developers. Musk said this month that gas turbines are “sold out through 2030” and that SpaceX is building a factory in Bastrop, Texas, to manufacture turbine blades in-house. The company says that move could cut delivery times by as much as 18 months.
The company’s newly announced $100 billion Starbase expansion in Louisiana, planned to add dozens of launch pads by 2029, adds to that power draw.
Starship is also NASA’s planned human landing system for Artemis III, expected to dock with the Orion crew capsule in a test ahead of the mission, currently slated for late next year alongside a competing lander from Blue Origin.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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