SpaceX sent Starship into Earth orbit for the first time Monday and deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites on board.
Ship 41 lost one of its six Raptor engines during ascent, then coasted on what the company called a "passively safe suborbital trajectory" while engineers checked systems.
Flight controllers gave the go call at 9:11 a.m. ET, and a single Raptor completed the orbital insertion burn about 26 minutes after liftoff. "Starship is orbital," noted Mission Control at SpaceX.
SpaceX had planned a roughly 10-hour mission circling Earth six times, but deorbited the ship after about three hours. Starship splashed down in the Pacific around noon.
Every previous Starship flight stopped short of orbit, ending in splashdowns or, in several cases, the loss of the vehicle.
Starlink capacity is the point
Starlink is SpaceX's largest business, and was its only profitable segment as of the second quarter. One Starship can carry 60 Starlink V3 satellites, roughly 20 times the capacity of a Falcon 9 launch. The V3s are too large to fly on Falcon 9 at all.
Each V3 satellite carries more than 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity, well above the V2 Mini units in service today. The new satellites, built in Redmond, Washington, use solar arrays generating twice the power of prior generations.
SpaceX operates around 11K active satellites, against roughly 650 for competitor Eutelsat OneWeb.
"It's not out of the question that at some point, Starlink will deliver a majority of the world's internet."
Elon Musk, SpaceX
Public markets are now watching the rocket program
SpaceX went public in June in the largest IPO on record and is valued at about $2T. The stock dipped below $100 shortly after the listing, then recovered as the company's AI compute business drew investor interest.
Musk had previously said Starship would reach orbit in 2022 and start deploying satellites in 2023. In November 2024, he said flights would run every two weeks by the end of 2025.
Reusability and reliability remain undemonstrated. SpaceX is preparing Starship for a NASA test flight next year and intends to use it to return US astronauts to the moon. COO Gwynne Shotwell said the company plans to launch AI compute satellites into orbit in 2027.
The flight also drew attention across satellite communications names, including Globalstar, which generates about $280.6M from mobile satellite services and counts SpaceX as a launch partner.
After years of missed timelines, Starship finally made orbit. The next test is whether SpaceX can turn the world’s biggest rocket into the machine that carries its biggest ambitions.
