SpaceX to decide Starship's orbit mid-flight on Flight 14
SpaceX is planning its first orbital attempt with Starship on Flight 14.The company said in a September 15 update that the rocket pushes for orbit only if it passes a health check partway through the flight. Orbit is the gate SpaceX must pass before Starship can carry its bigger V3 satellites and conduct in-space refueling tests. More than 500 sensors feed the abort call First, the plan keeps Starship on a well-known path. The upper stage will trace the same passively safe, suborbital arc to the Indian Ocean after the ascent burn that SpaceX used on previous tests, the companys update said. Flight controllers get their decision point in the next coast. They clear the vehicle to proceed or let it fall back and splash down. If the vehicle is good, one Raptor sea-level engine fires a circularization burn to place Starship into orbit. SpaceX describes the flight profile as a deliberate staging approach that keeps an ocean splashdown option open at several pre-set points, rather than committing to orbit the moment the engines cut off. A deorbit burn on that same engine ends a nominal mission. The spacecraft can either splash down in the ocean or return to the launch site to be caught and reused. The
