Starship: First Orbital Flight September 28, Booster on Pad
Super Heavy booster B21 has arrived at the launch pad in Starbase. SpaceX targets September 28, 2:15 p.m. Serbian time, for Starship's first orbital flight; FAA approval is still pending.
SpaceX rolled the Super Heavy booster designated B21 out of the assembly building in Starbase, Texas, overnight between September 20 and 21, and about two hours later placed it on launch pad 2. The move is preparation for Flight 14, the first orbital flight planned for the Starship system, now pushed back from September 22 to September 28. This outlet had not previously reported on these preparations.
Liftoff is scheduled for Monday, September 28, at 7:15 a.m. Central Time in the US, 12:15 GMT, which is 2:15 p.m. in Serbia. The launch window runs 75 minutes, from pad 2, known as Pad B, in Starbase. The original date was September 22; SpaceX pushed the flight back by a week and has not publicly stated why, Engadget reports. “Targeting as soon as Monday, September 28 for the launch of Starship Flight 14, pending regulatory approval,” the company said in a post cited by Engadget.
The upper stage carries the designation S41, and the mission as a whole has been named Starship Flight 14 and Starlink 31-1. The Super Heavy booster stands 72 meters tall and 9 meters wide, the Starship vehicle is 52 meters tall, and the booster is powered by 33 Raptor engines. All thirteen Starship flights to date have been suborbital; September 28 would mark the first time the system actually reaches orbit.
If the flight succeeds, Starship is meant to deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites into orbit at an altitude of about 275 kilometers, on a track inclined 30 degrees to the equator. Each V3 satellite carries a download capacity of 1 Tbps, ten times more than the previous V2 generation, and an uplink of 160 Gbps, so the 26 satellites would add a combined 26 Tbps to the network. The ship is expected to circle Earth roughly six times over nearly ten hours, then fire one engine for a deorbit burn and come down in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile. The Super Heavy booster is set to land in the Gulf of Mexico, with no attempt to catch it with the launch tower.
On the previous flight, in July, Starship carried 20 V3 satellites on a suborbital trajectory, and all of them burned up in the atmosphere about 20 minutes after separation. That flight was simply a check on whether the ship could carry the new generation of satellites at all. This time, the 26 satellites are meant to stay in orbit, deploy their antennas and solar panels, and begin serving users within a few weeks.
The final word on the flight belongs to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which has not yet issued a launch license. In a statement cited by Spaceflight Now, the agency said:
In addition to completing the environmental review, license applications must also meet FAA safety, payload policy and financial responsibility requirements before a flight can be approved.
This would be the first time the FAA has issued an orbital license for an object the size of Starship’s upper stage, which stands 52 meters tall. If the deorbit maneuver does not go as planned, an uncontrolled return through the atmosphere could scatter larger pieces of the ship across the Earth, which is why the agency is reviewing both safety and financial requirements before granting a license.
The date has already slipped once, without a public explanation, and regulatory approval is still missing. Until the FAA issues a license, September 28 remains the announced date, not a confirmed one.
