NewSpace RFP

SpaceX launched Starship on its fourteenth flight from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas, at 12:48:59 UTC on September 28. Our launch record marks it successful. It was the first Starship flight to reach orbit; the thirteen before it were suborbital. The ship began releasing 26 Starlink V3 satellites about eight and a half minutes after the burn that put it in orbit, and all 26 were out within about half an hour, the first operational payload a Starship has carried to orbit. The flight plan called for about ten hours and six orbits, ending in the Pacific off Chile. The ship came down after 3 hours and 8 minutes, north of Hawaii.

Engine losses and the early return

The Super Heavy booster shut down one of its 33 Raptors during ascent, and Spaceflight Now reported a second shutting down early in the boostback burn; Payload reported that the booster again failed to relight all of its engines for the descent. It set down in the Gulf of Mexico a few miles off the Texas coast, with no catch attempted. The ship, too, lost an engine on the way up, one of its three vacuum Raptors, and reached an orbit about 180 miles up with the engines it had left. After splashdown it tipped over and exploded.

SpaceX had not explained the early return when SpacePolicyOnline published its account of the flight. Spaceflight Now reported that mission managers chose to bring the ship down once the Starlink satellites were safely away.

The lander contract

The lander NASA is paying SpaceX to develop is a Starship variant. NASA selected SpaceX on April 16, 2021, to continue developing a human lander for what was then planned as the first crewed Artemis landing, in a firm-fixed-price, milestone-based award valued at $2.89 billion. The contract, 80MSFC20C0034, began on May 13, 2020, as one of three lander design awards; the federal spending record closes the other two, to Blue Origin and Dynetics, in August 2021. It now shows $3.21 billion obligated and $2.90 billion paid out, with a potential end date of December 6, 2027.

The Starship lander's design relies on refilling its propellant in orbit. The required launch count is an estimate: SpacePolicyOnline reports SpaceX's estimate of roughly ten launches to fill an orbital depot, and Spaceflight Now reports up to about fifteen tanker launches. Those missions require Starship to reach orbit, which it first did on September 28.

Two landers and a 2028 landing

NASA announced an updated Artemis sequence on February 27. Artemis III, which NASA schedules for 2027, now stays in low Earth orbit, where NASA says it will "endeavor to include a rendezvous and docking with one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin" to prepare for an Artemis IV landing in 2028.

The second lander is Blue Origin's Blue Moon. NASA selected it on May 19, 2023, for Artemis V, in an award valued at $3.4 billion. Its contract, 80MSFC23CA014, signed the day before, is also firm fixed price, with $2.19 billion obligated, $1.35 billion paid out, and a potential end date of April 3, 2032.

The satellites

The 26 satellites were the first Starlink V3s in orbit. SpacePolicyOnline reports ten times the downlink and twenty-two times the uplink capacity of the V2 generation. Payload reports that a full Starship load is up to 60 V3 satellites, that these 26 are expected to join the operating constellation, potentially within weeks, and that three of them carried cameras to photograph the ship's heat shield.

Starship claims in the ledger

The Claims & outcomes ledger carries two. Elon Musk said in March 2025 that Starship departs for Mars at the end of 2026, carrying Optimus; the ledger marks that at risk. Starlab Space said in January 2024 that Starship would launch its whole station in a single mission before the ISS retires; that one is pending. Flight 14 is the first Starship to reach Earth orbit.