SpaceX's Starship megarocket makes orbital debut deploying Starlinks before early ending

SpaceX's Starship megarocket makes orbital debut deploying Starlinks before early ending.

Key points

• Once in orbit, Starship deployed 26 next-generation Starlink satellites one by one at an altitude of roughly 269 km (161 miles).
• "All 26 Starlink V3 operational satellites deployed and operating nominally, " Musk wrote on X.
• "Starship is 2 to 3 years away from hourly flights, " Musk wrote on X on Sunday.
• The mission was scheduled to last 10 hours, but was reduced to three hours after the engine difficulty.
• SpaceX shares, which were up almost nine per cent from the IPO rate, were down regarding 1pc on Monday.

SpaceX's Starship megarocket makes orbital debut deploying Starlinks before early ending. Reuters Published September 28, 2026 Updated September 28, 2026 11: 40pm. Join our Whatsapp Channel. Add Dawn as a trusted source.

SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket reached orbit for the first time despite an unexpected engine shutdown midflight on Monday and deployed the first batch of new Starlink satellites, but the mission was cut short and concluded with a controlled and fiery touchdown in the Pacific.

SpaceX's next-generation Starship rocket reached orbit for the first time on Monday despite having one of its engines shut down unexpectedly, overcoming a hitch mid-flight to deploy its first batch of new Starlink satellites in a truncated mission ending hours earlier than originally planned.

Meanwhile, the mission was scheduled to last 10 hours, but was reduced to three hours after the engine difficulty. As Elon Musk's firm aims to put the vehicle into routine employ starting afterwards this year, launching from Texas, it was the rocket's 14th flight since 2023.

SpaceX shares, which were up almost nine per cent from the IPO rate, were down regarding 1pc on Monday. Much of SpaceX's market worth and continued investor confidence in the firm, valued at $2 trillion as of Friday's close, ride on the success of Starship. It was designed as the world's first fully reusable spacecraft.

In practice, the uncrewed 40-story-tall vehicle, consisting of a Super Heavy booster rocket topped by the main upper-stage Starship vessel, thundered off its launch pad from SpaceX's Starbase complex along the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville.

After hard landings for the booster on two previous missions, the Super Heavy booster lofted the Starship upper stage into space before returning itself to Gulf waters for an engine-controlled splashdown. Some engines on that booster halted working during its descent, SpaceX stated.

Upon reaching space, one of Starship's three main engines shut down prematurely, a development that led SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot to announce on the company's live stream of the mission that the craft would be unable to reach orbit.

"The team has made the call not to commit to orbit, " Huot remarked.

But Huot reversed course minutes afterwards after an update from engineers confirmed that the craft could still attempt an engine firing that would boost it into orbit. It starship successfully did minutes afterwards.

Starship's controlled descent into the Pacific culminated with a thruster manoeuvre that flipped the vehicle vertically so that it hit the sea in a nose-up position.

Fire engulfed the base of the rocket as it touched down on the ocean surface before tipping on its side, followed by a sizeable fireball. The firm had not planned to recover the spacecraft from the sea after the mission.

Starship was built to launch SpaceX's Starlink satellites more frequently and carry future NASA missions to the moon. Reaching orbit, a primary benchmark for any new rocket designed to deliver payloads to space, was a long-delayed feat for Starship. It musk once predicted would be achieved in 2022, to be followed by satellite deployments in 2023.

All 13 of Starship's previous test flights since 2023 were limited to suborbital space, despite a almost decade-long development campaign that has cost SpaceX more than $15 billion to date. Musk has remarked he envisions ultimately flying hundreds or thousands of Starship missions a year, a launch pace unprecedented in the space industry.

"Starship is 2 to 3 years away from hourly flights, " Musk wrote on X on Sunday. Test mission with real payload.

Monday's voyage counted as a test flight even though Starship carried its first orbital payload.

Analysts estimate Monday's launch of SpaceX's new V3 Starlink satellites equals hundreds of millions of dollars in projected revenue for its Starlink unit, based on the network's continued customer capacity, underscoring Starship's role in serving the company's profit nucleus.

According to SpaceX, the V3 Starlink satellites deployed on Monday can handle 10 times more data than their predecessor V2 mini-sats that the firm has rolled out 20 or 30 at a time on its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets. Seeking to build out his broadband satellite constellation at a faster pace, Musk wants to launch the V3s in batches of 60 per launch once Starship goes into routine operation.

Starship's orbital debut came three months after SpaceX went public with a record-shattering IPO in June that created it the sixth-biggest US business by value and turned Musk. This person founded it in 2002, into the world's first trillionaire.

Starship is additionally set to play a pivotal role in NASA's Artemis program. It seeks to return astronauts to the moon's surface for the first time since 1972 and build a long-term lunar presence as a stepping stone to eventual human exploration of Mars.

For now, spaceX' s Starship megarocket makes orbital debut deploying Starlinks before early ending remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.