Starship · Flight 14 · Starlink · 6 min read
Starship Flight 14
A window became a flown log. First orbit. Twenty-six V3s. Pacific splashdown.
A window became a flown log.
A window became a flown log. First orbit. Twenty-six V3s. Pacific splashdown. On Monday, September 28 at 7:48 a.m. CT, Starship lifted off from Starbase, Texas on its 14th flight and first attempt to go to orbit. SpaceX: the first orbital Starship flight, and the first to deliver meaningful payload to orbit, with 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
Booster
Super Heavy ignited all 33 Raptor 3 engines and climbed over the Gulf of America. A single Raptor on the booster shut down during the climb. Hot-staging. The ship ignited all six Raptors. The booster flipped and relit 31 of the planned 33 engines for boostback. That burn was built to run the remaining liquid oxygen out of the main tank, a limit test ahead of future return-to-launch-site flights. Landing burn: 11 of the planned 13, then five, then three. Splashdown in the Gulf. When the landing burn shut down, the flight termination system fired as a demonstration of the safety hardware. A Gulf splashdown is not a tower catch.
Ship
On the way up, one Raptor vacuum engine shut down early. The other five burned longer. The planned, passively safe suborbital trajectory held. Flight control checked the three sea-level Raptors needed for later burns, called them healthy, and gave a go for orbital operations. One sea-level Raptor lit for insertion. Starship entered orbit around Earth for the first time. After a brief coast it deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites. Contact came back on every satellite, over laser links, ground stations, and Starlink user terminals.
Short coast, northern Pacific
Out of caution after the ascent engine issue, the team limited time on orbit and deorbited toward the northern Pacific, one of two zones cleared of sea and air traffic before launch. First deorbit burn: one sea-level Raptor. The close was all three sea-level Raptors in a landing burn and flip, splashdown on target in the Pacific Ocean.
What this note retires
No pending regulatory window. No 7:15 a.m. CT open. No planned 275 kilometers, six orbits, or ten hours as the flown story. Ship 40-to-41 tile reuse is not in these paragraphs. The September 15 Starship to Orbit update said orbital missions would begin with Flight 14. This is that flight, as flown.
Selected primary source
SpaceX, Starship Flight 14 mission page, https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-14. Liftoff Monday, September 28, 2026, 7:48 a.m. CT. Not an Updates post.
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