10 Things You Must Know About Starship Flight 14: SpaceX's First Orbital Attempt With 26 Starlink Satellites

STARBASE, Texas — SpaceX is set to launch Starship on Monday in an attempt to reach orbit for the first time, a flight that could mark the start of the rocket's move from testing to regular operations. The outcome was not known at the time of writing. Here are ten things to know about Flight 14.

First, the timing. The mission, designated Starlink Group 31-1, has a 75-minute launch window that opens at 8:15 a.m. Eastern time (7:15 a.m. local, 1215 GMT) from Starbase, Texas. SpaceX said it is targeting liftoff about a half-hour into the window, at roughly 8:46 a.m. Eastern, according to CNN. Backup days run from September 29 to October 4, NASASpaceflight reported. Live coverage from SpaceX begins about 30 minutes before liftoff and is planned to continue through splashdown. SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said conditions looked good. "Weather is gorgeous," he said, adding that clouds were "not going to be an issue throughout the count."

Second, this is the first orbital attempt. All 13 earlier Starship flights were deliberately suborbital, lasting up to about an hour, so that a vehicle that lost control would come down rather than linger in orbit. SpaceX says going to orbit begins the next phase of making Starship fully and rapidly reusable. The stack stands about 407 feet tall and is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, according to Space.com.

Third, the flight plan is long. CNN's timeline shows the booster attempting to relight 13 engines about six and a half minutes after liftoff for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. About eight minutes in, the upper ship shuts down its engines on a suborbital path. At about 25 minutes, if all systems are working, it will fire for nearly 20 seconds to enter orbit. Satellite deployment begins at about 34 minutes and takes roughly half an hour, followed by about eight hours of coasting and a deorbit burn near the 8-hour, 52-minute mark. The ship is expected to orbit at about 275 kilometers, complete roughly six laps and splash down in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile after nearly 10 hours.

Fourth, the payload is real. Ship 41 carries 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational units of the new design to be deployed. SpaceX says each adds 1 terabit per second of capacity, for a total of 26 terabits on this flight, about 10 times what a single Falcon 9 launch of the smaller V2 mini satellites delivers. Three of the satellites carry cameras. "Three of the satellites have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship's heatshield and transmit imagery down to operators," SpaceX said.

Fifth, safety gates control the mission. SpaceX said the ship will perform its orbital insertion burn only after flight controllers confirm enough hardware redundancy remains to carry out the deorbit burn later. If the ship is judged unsafe to remain in orbit, mission control could cut the flight to two or five orbits, according to the mission description. Huot called the mission's range planning demanding. "This is the most complex range operation we've ever had to do with Starship," he said.

Sixth, nothing will be caught. Both the Super Heavy booster and the ship are planned to splash down in the ocean instead of returning to the launch tower's arms. Elon Musk had floated a ship catch after the last flight but reversed course over debris concerns. "What we're most concerned about is if the ship were to break up over land and rain debris on people," Musk said at the All-In Summit. "Our popularity would diminish very rapidly." Two ships broke up on 2025 flights, scattering debris near Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas, CNN noted.

Seventh, the heat shield is under the microscope. The ship must endure temperatures above 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit on reentry, and reuse requires it to work repeatedly with little refurbishment. SpaceX said this ship has "additional retention mechanisms added to tiles in areas deemed to be at highest risk of falling off during ascent," plus a curved tile design meant to reduce heating in gaps. Two tiles recovered from Ship 40 are being reused for the first time.

Eighth, Ship 40 informs the design. On Flight 13 on July 24, dubbed "Lucky 13," the ship made a near-perfect splashdown in the Indian Ocean and stayed afloat. SpaceX's recovery team guided it for about 24 days to Christmas Island, and NASASpaceflight reported it was later loaded onto a ship for return, expected as early as October 8. Flight 13's ship also deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites on a suborbital path.

Ninth, the booster has work to do. On Flight 13, ice clogged the three center engines during the boostback burn, only eight of 13 planned engines relit for landing, and the booster made a hard splashdown, SpaceX said. For Flight 14, it changed the hardware to improve engine filtering and modified software to make relights more reliable.

Tenth, the stakes go beyond one flight. CNN reported SpaceX faces intense pressure to ready Starship for a crucial NASA test flight next year that could pave the way for the next Moon landing. SpaceX is also planning a $100 billion "Starbase, Louisiana" spaceport, with a first launch targeted as soon as 2029. Musk has called full reusability "preposterously difficult," and SpaceX calls it "the holy grail of rocketry."

Whether Flight 14 reaches orbit, deploys its satellites and returns intact will determine how quickly that work can move ahead. Any result reported after this article was written may change the picture.