SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time on September 28, 2026, and deployed 26 high-capacity Starlink "V3" satellites, each capable of about 1 Tbit/s of downlink and 160 Gbit/s of uplink capacity.

The milestone on Starship's 14th test flight nearly ended in failure. SpaceX lost one of the engines on the upper-stage Ship vehicle during ascent, and the company initially scrubbed the plan to commit to orbit, raising the prospect of another suborbital landing in the Indian Ocean, as happened on the previous test flight in late July.

"The team has made the call not to commit to orbit … Definitely not the outcome we were all hoping to hear today," SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said on the company's live video feed. But he stressed that "we are not giving up yet on orbit."

After additional checks, SpaceX reversed the decision about 22 minutes into the flight and lit a Raptor engine roughly three minutes later to send the vehicle into orbit. About 12 minutes after that, the payload door opened for the first of the 26 satellite deployments, with the spacecraft releasing the V3s through its slot-like payload door.

The capacity leap over the current generation is substantial. Each V3 delivers about 10 times the downlink and 22 times the uplink capacity of a Starlink V2 satellite. Starlink plans to use the V3 fleet to expand capacity, add speed and extend coverage to residential and business customers as deployment scales up.

After release, ground teams instructed the satellites to unfold their antennas and solar arrays and begin raising their orbits using onboard thrusters. SpaceX confirmed Starlink had made contact with all 26 satellites deployed on the flight.

The company expects the new satellites to enter commercial service within a few weeks, though it did not give a specific date. Once operational, the V3s will join the existing Starlink constellation and start serving customers after a suite of in-orbit checks.

Today's deployment fell well short of what Starship can carry. SpaceX said a fully loaded Starship can loft up to 60 V3 satellites, delivering roughly 20 times the capacity of the V2 satellites that fit on a single Falcon 9 launch. Beyond broadband, the company plans to use Starship to deploy its "Starmind" orbital AI data centers and to support future Moon and Mars missions.

The flight plan called for Starship to complete six orbits. SpaceX did not attempt to "catch" the upper-stage Ship vehicle with the launch tower on this test — a maneuver the program needs to master to reach its goal of becoming a fully reusable platform.

The previous Starship flight deployed 20 V3 satellites, but those were "demised" — deliberately sent to burn up in Earth's atmosphere — after a series of tests. The satellites released on September 28 are the first V3s slated to join the constellation and enter service, marking the transition of Starship from test vehicle to operational broadband delivery platform.