Starship Flight 14: Starship's First Attempt to Reach Orbit, Now Targeted for September 28

What changed: SpaceX has moved the 14th flight of Starship to no earlier than Monday, September 28, 2026, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. Central Time from Starbase, Texas, "pending regulatory approval," according to the company's mission page. SpaceX announced the new date on X on September 17. The mission page SpaceX posted on September 15 had given Tuesday, September 22, with the same window. SpaceX's announcement gave no reason for the change, and SpacePolicyOnline reported the postponement without one. On September 23, SpaceX stacked the rocket on the launch pad at Starbase, Spaceflight Now reported: Ship 41 on top of Super Heavy booster B21. The flight still awaits approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The date matters less than the destination. SpaceX says its test flights so far have "intentionally flown passively safe suborbital trajectories." Flight 14 is planned to be the first to send the Starship upper stage into orbit.

The mission plan

From SpaceX's published mission description:

• Orbit. Starship is expected to fly at about 275 km, complete about six orbits over a flight of nearly 10 hours, and splash down in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile.
• A safety gate. 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." SpaceX does not describe the alternative; by implication, the ship would otherwise stay on a suborbital path.
• Payload. 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first V3 satellites SpaceX plans to deploy into its constellation. SpaceX says each adds 1 terabit per second (Tbps) of capacity, 26 Tbps for the flight, and calls that "~10x the capacity compared to a single launch of V2 mini Starlink satellites on Falcon 9." Three of the satellites have been modified with cameras to scan Starship's heat shield and send the imagery to operators.
• Deorbit. A deorbit burn using a single Raptor engine while in space, then a controlled reentry, descent and splashdown.
• Booster. The Super Heavy booster is to fly a boostback burn and a landing burn at an offshore landing point in the Gulf. Its landing target on this flight is at sea, not the launch tower.
• Heat shield. Extra tile retention in the areas SpaceX judged most likely to shed tiles during ascent, fixes for newly found paths that let plasma flow behind tiles, curved tiles in several areas to reduce heating in the gaps, and two tiles recovered from Ship 40 reflown on Ship 41, which SpaceX calls the first tile reuse for Starship.

What Flight 13 left to fix

Flight 13 launched on July 24, 2026. SpacePolicyOnline reported that the ship splashed down in the Indian Ocean near Australia and remained intact, floating on the surface, and that it deployed 20 real Starlink V3 satellites on a suborbital path, where they burned up on reentry about 20 minutes after release. SpaceX says some Flight 14 heat-shield changes come directly from data gathered from the Flight 13 ship as it floated in the Indian Ocean.

The booster had a harder day. SpaceX says it used all 33 engines on its boostback burn for the first time, but the three center engines showed signs of ice clogging, which ended the burn early, and only 8 of the 13 planned engines reignited for the landing burn before a hard splashdown in the Gulf. The Flight 14 booster has hardware changes to improve filtering to the engines and software changes to make relights more reliable, the company says.

Why orbit is the milestone that matters

This section combines reported facts with SpaceNexus analysis, labeled where it is analysis.

For Starlink. SpaceX has said that "Starship will deploy the more advanced V3 Starlink satellites." If Flight 14 deploys working V3 satellites, SpaceX says they should begin serving customers "as soon as a few weeks after launch," after they raise their orbits and finish on-orbit checkouts. That would be the first step toward the capacity increase SpaceX has promised for its broadband network.

For NASA's Moon program. NASA announced on February 27, 2026 that Artemis III, now in 2027, will test systems in low Earth orbit, including rendezvous and docking with one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin, and that the first landing will follow in 2028 on Artemis IV. NASA has said SpaceX plans to complete propellant loading in Earth orbit, using a storage depot filled by tanker flights, to send a fully fueled Starship lander to the Moon. (Analysis: ship-to-ship propellant transfer in orbit cannot be demonstrated until Starship reaches orbit, so orbit is a precondition for the rest of the lander schedule, and every month Flight 14 slips removes margin before those NASA milestones.)

For reusability. SpaceX writes that "by going to orbit, the next phase of developing Starship to be fully and rapidly reusable can begin." (Analysis: catching and reflying the upper stage requires a controlled return from orbit, and Flight 14's deorbit burn and splashdown would be the first rehearsal of that return.)

For investors. SpaceX has been a public company since its initial public offering in June 2026. (Analysis: Starship's progress bears on its Starlink capacity plans and its NASA lander work.) Nothing in this article is a view on SpaceX shares or any other security; our SpaceX stock explainer covers how the company is structured and reports.

What would count as success

SpaceNexus analysis, based on SpaceX's stated objectives.

In rough order of importance:

1. A clean ascent, hot staging and the orbital insertion burn (the new part).
2. Deployment of the 26 Starlink V3 satellites, and later confirmation that they are working and raising their orbits.
3. The single-engine Raptor deorbit burn in space.
4. Reentry with the heat shield intact and a controlled splashdown in the Pacific west of Chile.
5. The booster's boostback and landing burns completing, which would suggest the Flight 13 engine problems are fixed.

A flight can fall short on some of these and still give SpaceX useful data; SpaceX says its suborbital test flights were flown to maximize public safety "while allowing for maximum learning." The difference now is that reaching orbit is the stated goal, so the headline outcome will be clear.

What to watch

• Regulatory approval. The September 28 target is "pending regulatory approval." SpaceX says its schedule "is dynamic and likely to change" and points readers to its mission page and X account for updates.
• The targeted launch window: 7:15 to 8:30 a.m. Central Time on September 28 at the earliest, from Starbase, with a webcast starting about 30 minutes before liftoff. SpaceX says coverage is planned to continue through splashdown, "with the potential for hours of live views from Starship as it orbits Earth."
• The Starlink V3 checkout over the weeks following launch.
• Later flights. SpaceX has not published mission objectives for Flight 15. (Analysis: the milestones NASA's lander plans depend on include ship-to-ship propellant transfer in orbit, which requires reliable orbital flights first.)

Our Starship tracker will carry the result. This article will be updated after the flight.

Sources

• SpaceX: "Starship Flight 14" mission page (content as published September 15 to 23, 2026; content API)
• SpaceX on X: "Now targeting to launch Starship Flight 14 as early as Monday, September 28, pending regulatory approval" (September 17, 2026)
• SpaceX on X: "Starship will deploy the more advanced V3 Starlink satellites..." (August 25, 2025)
• SpacePolicyOnline: "What's Happening in Space Policy September 20-26, 2026" (Marcia Smith, September 20, 2026)
• SpacePolicyOnline: "Successful Flight for Starship IFT-13" (Marcia Smith, July 25, 2026)
• Spaceflight Now: "Super Heavy-Starship rocket chalks up mostly successful test flight" (July 25, 2026; Flight 13 launch date and time)
• Quartz: "Starship eyes its first trip to orbit with Sept. 22 launch of flight 14" (updated September 18, 2026)
• SpaceX mission content as archived September 15, 2026 (original September 22 date)
• Space.com: "SpaceX pushes next Starship launch back to Sept. 28, a 6-day delay for megarocket's 1st orbital flight" (Mike Wall, updated September 17, 2026)
• Spaceflight Now: "SpaceX stack Starship and Super Heavy for first orbital flight" (September 23, 2026)
• NASA: "NASA Adds Mission to Artemis Lunar Program, Updates Architecture" (RELEASE26-022, February 27, 2026)
• NASA: "NASA, SpaceX Illustrate Key Moments of Artemis Lunar Lander Mission" (November 20, 2024)
• CNBC: "SpaceX IPO takeaways: SPCX closes at $161, jumping 19% after record debut" (June 12, 2026)