Historic Flight: SpaceX’s Starship Successfully Reaches Orbit for the First Time
In a monumental achievement for space exploration, SpaceX’s mammoth Starship rocket successfully reached Earth’s orbit for the first time on Monday, September 28, 2026. This marks a significant milestone years in the making for Elon Musk’s pioneering aerospace company.
The colossal spacecraft, standing at a towering 171 feet, lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas at 7:48 a.m. CT. The 14th test flight of the Starship achieved orbit around 8:15 a.m. local time, eliciting ecstatic cheers from SpaceX employees at the launch site. Despite a moment of high drama when one of Starship’s six Raptor engines failed shortly after stage separation, mission controllers decided to press on to orbit.
During its flight, the Starship successfully deployed 26 next-generation Starlink v3 satellites, each producing twice the power of their predecessors. These advanced satellites are expected to begin serving customers within the coming weeks. Although the mission was cut short to three hours instead of the planned 10, the spacecraft made a successful splashdown north of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
SpaceX had initially aimed for six full orbits to demonstrate Starship’s readiness for NASA’s Artemis moon program. However, reaching orbit at all is a significant stride towards future crewed lunar missions and Musk’s ambitious vision of launching AI computing satellites into space in 2027.
Source: CNBC – SpaceX launches its massive Starship rocket into orbit for the first time