Pins matching tag:Starship

On 13 October 2024 SpaceX's Super Heavy Booster 12 flew back to Starbase, Texas and was caught mid-air by the launch tower's chopstick arms, the first time a rocket booster has been recovered that way. It happened on the first attempt, about seven minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX and Louisiana announced a planned USD 100 billion spaceport in Vermilion Parish on August 25, 2026. The state describes five launch complexes with two pads each and 3,000 expected direct jobs over ten years. Construction is targeted for 2027 and a first launch as early as 2029. These are planned milestones; residents are challenging the public process around the parish deal.

SpaceX's 14th Starship test flight lifted off from Starbase, Texas at 7:48 a.m. CT on 28 September 2026 and became the first Starship to reach orbit, after 13 earlier flights that were all suborbital. One of the ship's six engines shut down during ascent; Starship still reached orbit and released 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first of the new generation and its first operational payload. The flight was cut from a planned ten hours to about three: the ship deorbited and splashed down in the Pacific north of Hawaii, and the Super Heavy booster splashed down in the Gulf off Starbase instead of a tower catch.

SpaceX is targeting no earlier than November 13, 2026 for Starship Flight 15, according to Eric Berger’s November 5 report of launch vice president Kiko Dontchev’s UP.Summit remarks. No final liftoff time is announced.

SpaceX plans to begin launching its second-generation Starlink Mobile direct-to-cell constellation on Starship in mid-2027, deploying about 1,200 satellites within six months for global voice and data coverage in S-band spectrum, pending regulatory approvals.

Docking two Starships is the step that makes orbital propellant transfer — and with it Artemis and Mars — possible. On 20 September 2026 Kalshi gave it a 69% chance before 2028, while Polymarket’s dated ladder put only 3.2% on it happening by the end of 2026 against 51.5% by the end of 2027.