SpaceX Called Off the Orbit Burn. Then Starship Made Orbit and Deployed 26 Starlink V3s

"Starship is orbital." That was the call on SpaceX's webcast after a single Raptor finished the orbital insertion burn. A host later called it "Starship's first ever orbital flight." Then the ship opened its payload door and deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites it was carrying.

It almost didn't happen. One of the ship's vacuum engines shut down early on the way up. Soon after, Dan, one of the webcast hosts, told viewers the team had made the call not to commit to orbit. Then Dan broke off. A few minutes later, they were go for orbit.

I posted SpaceX's webcast, about 47 minutes of it. If you watch one stretch, start around the 16-minute mark of my upload and keep going to about 25. The engine-out, the no-orbit call, the reversal and the burn all happen in that window.

I currently own SpaceX stock.

The plan, and why orbit is different

Flight 14's plan, as the hosts laid it out, looked quite different from anything SpaceX had flown. After hot staging, the booster heads back for a splashdown just off the coast from Starbase. The ship's first burn puts it on a passively safe suborbital trajectory. Teams check its health. If it's good, a single Raptor relights for an orbital insertion burn. Then the 26 V3s go out over about 30 minutes, followed by a coast of about nine hours and six orbits, a de-orbit burn, re-entry, and a vertical splashdown in the Pacific off Chile.

Dan did the orbit explainer. Once you're high enough to clear the mountains, staying up is more about speed than height. The animation was a cannon in space. Fire the cannonball hard enough and the ground keeps dropping out from under it. That endless free fall is orbit.

Every Starship flight test before this one flew a passively safe suborbital trajectory. Even if they lost all control of the vehicle, Dan said, physics already had it headed for a splashdown in the Indian Ocean zone. This flight started the same way. "If we do nothing else, it's coming down in the Indian Ocean." After the orbit burn, there were built-in checkpoints to come home early.

The reason for the caution: Starship is built to survive re-entry, and Dan said it already has a couple of times, "almost in spite of us," on flights where they removed tiles and pushed the structure to the limit. Because it's that hard to kill, they have to make sure it comes down somewhere safe.

Engine 6 quits on the way up

Going in, a host said the weather was "really nice" and they weren't tracking any holds. All 33 engines lit on Super Heavy, and a host at the watch site later said the whole lawn and the whole building were "going absolutely nuts." After hot staging, the ship climbed on six of six Raptors and got a nominal trajectory call.

Then Dan pointed at the telemetry. Engine 6, one of the Raptor vacuum engines, or RVacs, had shut down about 30 seconds early. Dan compared it to Flight 12, which also had an RVac out. The ship has engine-out capability, so it ran on five of six and burned a little longer. Then ship engine cutoff.

Dan set up the problem right away. They had said repeatedly they'd only commit to orbit if everything looked really healthy, and an engine out on ascent could drive them not to commit, even though that engine wouldn't be used again. Then Dan tossed to Amanda and Jake at the watch site while the team took a look.

The call: no orbit

When Dan came back: "Sorry for the delay, guys." Because one of the engines went out on the way uphill, they were not going to do the burn that sends the ship into orbit. "Definitely not the outcome we were all hoping to hear today." They would only go when they were extremely confident in the health of the vehicle.

So the ship would stay on its suborbital path to the Indian Ocean, and SpaceX would not attempt to deploy the Starlinks. Dan was explaining that the ship was still carrying a bunch of additional payload. Then: "Oh, and actually, stand by."

"We are not giving up yet on orbit"

"All right, everybody, hang with me just for a couple of minutes." The team was going to attempt to reset the hold, and viewers were getting it in real time. "We are not giving up yet on orbit." Then: "Hopefully not another psych moment, but we'll see."

Dan laid out what the room was checking. First, whether the condition that shut the vacuum engine down violated their launch constraints or flight rules. If it didn't, they could still go. Second, the three center sea-level Raptors, the engines they need for both the orbital insertion burn and the de-orbit burn. Those looked healthy.

Dan called it "a little extra drama." They were 16 minutes into the flight, with insertion planned about 25 minutes in.

The burn would use a single Raptor fed from the header tanks. SpaceX had done relights with those tanks and the sea-level engines on earlier flight tests, a host explained, but never an orbital insertion burn. Then, waiting on the final poll: "We say excitement guaranteed. We don't lie."

Go for orbit

Dan came back around the 23-and-a-half-minute mark of my upload: "The go no-go poll for orbit has finished and we are go for orbit." A host down at the watch site said it was the first time they'd ever said that on this program.

One sea-level Raptor, planned for about 19 seconds. "Burn two is started." Then shutdown, no alerts or alarms on board, and "Starship is orbital." A host called it a huge milestone for the Starship teams, "one that we've been looking to get to for a couple of years now."

26 Starlink V3s, about one a minute

Starlink V3 debuted on the last Starship flight, which deployed the first 20 on a suborbital in-space test. A host said all 20 made contact over radio and laser links, and the ones with cameras imaged the ship's heat shield. Then they demised in the atmosphere. This flight was SpaceX's first attempt to deploy V3s into an operational orbit and add them to the constellation. Dan called it "the first functional payload delivery for the Starship program."

The payload door opened, and this deploy was slower on purpose. Earlier flight tests, a host said, were about getting them out the door to "speedrun some tests." This one was planned at about 30 minutes, roughly one every minute and change. The first satellite comes out around the 28-minute mark of the upload. Within minutes SpaceX said it had contact with the first two. On screen: about 26,000 km/h at 275 km, with no engines or thrusters firing. A host noted that orbit brings a new problem, managing temperatures all across the rocket.

The V3 numbers SpaceX gave on the webcast:

• About 1 terabit per second per satellite, so about 26 Tbps from this flight, which SpaceX put at roughly 10 times a single Falcon 9 launch of V2 mini satellites.
• About 10 times the downlink and 22 times the uplink capacity of the V2 satellite.
• Six 400-gigabit space lasers each, part of what they called a petabit laser mesh.
• Four quad-band radio backhaul antennas (Ka, E, V and W bands), with 8 times the supported capacity of V2.
• Built in Redmond, Washington.

Once out, the satellites deploy antennas and solar arrays, connect, and raise their orbits with onboard thrusters. SpaceX said they should begin serving customers within a few weeks. A host's plain-English version, from before launch: less congestion at peak hours, room for new households and businesses, and better service for rural towns, ships, aircraft, emergency response, schools and families on RV trips. Plus, the host joked, scrolling X in a Cybercab.

Three satellites carried cameras to scan Starship's heat shield, where some tiles were painted white to simulate missing ones. SpaceX said it's part of testing ways to analyze heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions.

Home early, three hours in

At the first checkpoint, a host said the team would take it and come back early, which meant fewer orbits. The webcast didn't give a reason beyond the team continuing to look at all the systems on board. SpaceX's recap afterward did: "Out of an abundance of caution given the engine issue experienced during ascent," the team limited the time on orbit. The same host called it "a wildly successful day so far." All 26 V3s were out, with contact on all 26. A later update confirmed contact via laser, via gateway and via user terminal on the ground.

Instead of Chile, the ship headed for a pre-cleared area in the northern Pacific. The de-orbit burn moved to about 2 hours 12 minutes into the flight, with landing a little over three hours in. A host called that "more than three times the length of any Starship mission up until this point." That's a bit generous: SpaceX's own timelines put its longest earlier flights at about 66 minutes, so this one ran a little under three times as long.

The ship flipped to fire retrograde, one Raptor for a planned 8 to 10 seconds. Good burn. "That means Starship is headed home."

Then the plasma light show. At around Mach 12, a host said, they'd already cut velocity about in half in a few minutes. Lower down, the ship drops into the belly-flop regime SpaceX learned in its suborbital campaigns at Starbase. SpaceX had recovery teams in both the northern Pacific and off Chile.

Don't skip the sunrise on the way down. Then subsonic, and the landing burn: all three lit, down to two. "Starship has landed." A host said it wasn't quite the extra-soft splashdown of the last one, "but Starship in the water nonetheless." SpaceX says the ship splashed down on target. Spaceflight Now reported that it then tipped over and exploded as leftover propellant ignited, as it said usually happens with ocean splashdowns.

The booster came home too

Super Heavy had its own engine story. One center engine went out after max Q, and a host called 31 of 33 on boostback. Heading into the landing burn, two of the 13 center engines were out. As long as they got 11 lit, the host said, they could bleed off enough velocity.

There was no tower catch on this flight, but a host said they'd still simulate the catch profile: a 13-engine landing burn, then five, then three for the final hover. Landing was confirmed, and the hosts called it a soft splashdown right off the coast of Starbase. SpaceX's recap adds that at landing burn shutdown, the booster's flight termination system was triggered "in a demonstration of the safety hardware."

What SpaceX says orbit opens up

Before launch, Dan laid out the stakes. A successful orbit "opens the door to full reusability," which means bringing Starship back for a catch and a reflight. Orbit also lets SpaceX start delivering Starlink V3s and other payloads, and do things like orbital propellant transfer. In Dan's words, "we've only got a couple thousand more flights in our near-term horizon."

There was no catch and no six-orbit coast this time. On future missions, a host said, SpaceX plans to carry up to 60 Starlink satellites per Starship. At 60, one Starship launch adds about 20 times the capacity of a single Falcon 9 launch. "One Starship rocket is worth 20 Falcon 9."

This Exclusive is from the long-form at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX8TcHSXQVw.