SpaceX Starship reaches orbit, deploys 26 Starlink V3 satellites

SpaceX’s Starship reached low-Earth orbit for the first time on Monday, then released 26 Starlink V3 satellites — the first operational next-generation craft lofted by the megarocket — before splashing down in the Pacific north of Hawaii about three hours after liftoff from Starbase, Texas.

Ship 41 lost one Raptor engine early in ascent, forcing a roughly 20-minute hold while controllers checked the sea-level engines needed for orbit insertion and re-entry. A go/no-go poll cleared the first-ever orbital-insertion burn, putting the vehicle about 275 kilometres up. Starlink deployment began about 34 minutes after launch; SpaceX said each V3 satellite adds roughly a terabit per second of capacity, and that one full Starship load moves about as much bandwidth as 10 Falcon 9 flights of older Starlinks. A July test had flown V3 birds on a suborbital path that burned them up; Monday’s batch is meant to join the live network within weeks. Super Heavy Booster 21 completed a soft Gulf splashdown after hot-staging.

Controllers truncated the flight from a planned multi-orbit, near-10-hour profile to roughly two orbits once primary goals were met. The milestone matters for Canadian rural and northern broadband users already on Starlink, and for NASA’s Artemis lunar architecture that still depends on a reliable Starship. Next steps include longer orbital stays, in-orbit refuelling demos and tower catch attempts — if Raptor reliability keeps pace with the vehicle’s new job as a commercial launcher.