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Blue Origin announces 3rd stage for its powerful New Glenn rocket —and a new engine

Blue Origin's big rocket is getting a little bigger.

Jeff Bezos' company announced today (Nov. 5) that it has developed a third stage for its New Glenn rocket, which it says will make the powerful launcher more capable and flexible.

The stage, called the GS3, "enhances New Glenn's capabilities," Blue Origin said in a blog post today. "The third stage enables direct deployment of satellite constellations to GEO [geostationary orbit] and supports heavy-lift science and exploration missions to the moon and deep space."

illustration of four tall white rockets against a white background

Illustration of the variants of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, with the new GS3 third stage now in the mix. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

New Glenn is a two-stage vehicle at the moment. Its reusable first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin's BE-4 engines, and its second stage features two of the company's BE-3Us. The rocket stands 322 feet (98 meters) tall and can haul 14.3 tons (13 metric tons) to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and 50 tons (45 metric tons) to low Earth orbit (LEO).

These are the specs for the standard, or "7x2," version of New Glenn. Last year, Blue Origin announced that it's developing a super-heavy variant known as the 9x4, because it will feature nine first-stage BE-4s and four upper-stage BE-3Us. The 9x4 will be nearly 400 feet (122 m) tall, and it will be able to loft 15.4 tons (14 metric tons) to GTO and 77 tons (70 metric tons) to LEO, according to Blue Origin.

New Glenn has flown three times to date, each time in the 7x2 configuration. The rocket debuted in January 2025, then launched again in November 2025 and again on April 19 of this year.

Things didn't go according to plan on that latest mission. The rocket deployed AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 communications satellite into the wrong orbit, and the spacecraft ended up being lost.

Another setback came just a month later: On May 28, New Glenn exploded on the pad during a routine engine test at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Blue Origin has been working ever since to rebuild the pad and get New Glenn ready for its fourth flight, which is expected to occur late this year.

a large, sphericial, yellow-orange rocket tank sits on a test pad in a desert landscape at dusk

Blue Origin tests a tank for the GS3 third stage of its New Glenn rocket at its Launch Site One in Texas. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

We now know that Blue Origin has also been working on the GS3 while those repairs were underway. The new stage will be powered by one BE-7 engine, which the company developed for use on its Blue Moon spacecraft, one of the two private vehicles that NASA selected to be crewed lunar landers for its Artemis program. (The other is SpaceX's Starship.)

Blue Moon landing missions won't need to launch on GS3-equipped New Glenn rockets, according to Blue Origin. But the third stage "can support sustained operations around the moon," the company wrote in today's blog post. "By delivering significant payload mass directly to trans-lunar injection (TLI), GS3 enables faster transit times while preserving propellant for on-orbit operations."

And there's already demand for such services: Blue Origin also announced today that a government customer (which it did not name) has booked a GS3 mission to cislunar (Earth-moon) space, with launch targeted for 2028.

a large silver, bell-shaped rocket engine sits on its side inside a large warehouse

Blue Origin's newly announced Northstar booster engine. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

And the company dropped yet more news today — that it's working on a new first-stage engine, called Northstar.

Like Blue Origin's other booster engine, the BE-4, Northstar burns liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellant, a combination known as methalox. But the new engine is more powerful and less complex.

"Compared to the BE-4 engine, Northstar reduces mass by 30% and parts count by 50%, while increasing thrust from 640,000 to 715,000 pounds-force," Blue Origin said in a second blog post today. "Manufacturing advancements have also significantly shortened production timelines, enabling assembly in less than a day."

Northstar went from program approval to development testing in just 11 months, according to the company. But today's update did not say when the new engine will fly for the first time.

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2 astronauts will finish upgrading ISS solar arrays during spacewalk today: Watch it live

Two spacewalking astronauts will finish upgrading the International Space Station's power system today (Nov. 5), and you can watch the action live.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon and the Canadian Space Agency's Joshua Kutryk will install the eighth and final International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) today, during a roughly seven-hour spacewalk that's scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT).

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, beginning at 7 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).

closeup of an astronaut's reflective visor during a spacewalk, with earth visible in the background

NASA astronaut Anil Menon points his camera toward his spacesuit’s helmet visor and takes a selfie during a spacewalk on Oct. 29, 2026. (Image credit: NASA)

Today's extravehicular activity (EVA) will be the second in a week for Menon and Kutryk, who installed the station's seventh iROSA during an Oct. 29 spacewalk. That excursion was the 100th U.S. spacewalk from the ISS to date, and the first EVA for a Canadian astronaut since 2019.

Today's spacewalk will wrap up an ambitious ISS power upgrade that has taken more than five years to pull off.

"The installation job will complete the years-long process that began in June 2021 to augment the space station’s power generating capacity from 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts," NASA officials wrote about the EVA in a blog post on Tuesday (Nov. 3). That's a boost of about 30%.

Menon and Kutryk are currently sharing the ISS with five other astronauts — NASA's Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina and Sergey Teteryatnikov.

Delaney, Kutryk, Teteryatnikov and Watkins arrived at the ISS on Oct. 1, on SpaceX's Crew-13 mission. Dubrov, Kikina and Menon got there in mid-July, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

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NASA’s Swift space telescope crashes back to Earth after failed rescue attempt

NASA's Swift space telescope has reached the end of its long and winding road.

Swift fell uncontrolled to Earth today (Nov. 4), 22 years after it launched but just three months after a private spacecraft was supposed to boost it to a higher, life-extending orbit.

The 3,200-pound (1,450 kilograms) observatory reentered Earth's atmosphere at 7:39 a.m. EST (1239 GMT) today over northern Sumatra, according to satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, who cited U.S. Space Force data. The fall likely didn't make much of an impact; NASA officials predicted beforehand that most of the minibus-sized Swift would burn up as it fell, and they put the odds of any of the surviving pieces hurting anyone on Earth at just 1 in 2,100.

Several videos circulating on social media appear to show the spacecraft's fiery reentry, though it has yet to be independently verified.

Swift — officially known as the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer — launched to Earth orbit in November 2004 on a two-year mission to study gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most powerful explosions in the universe. "Swift" was not an acronym but rather referred to the spacecraft's observational agility.

"Swift needed to detect and locate gamma-ray bursts, communicate their position to other observatories, and then swing its telescopes around to image the burst locations before their afterglows faded out," S. Bradley Cenko, Swift's principal investigator (PI) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in an Oct. 23 statement. "This typically took Swift about a minute to do."

Swift didn't just observe GRBs. It also studied a variety of other cosmic bodies and phenomena, from faraway supernova explosions and feeding black holes to asteroids and comets in our own solar system.

And it kept doing this long after its warranty expired — for about 20 years after, in fact. The space telescope didn't conduct its final science observation until this past Oct. 20. (Swift underwent a name change during this stretch: In 2018, it was rechristened the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after its first PI, who died the previous year.)

"Swift delivered an incredible, lasting return on investment for the nation, designed for a two-year primary mission but productive for more than 10 times as long," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, said in the same Oct. 23 statement.

"In that time, Swift played a major role in advancing our understanding of the changing universe and was part of a revolution in astrophysics that showed how critical rapid-response observations are to the entire community," he added.

selfie taken by a spacecraft showing one of its solar panels with earth in the background

Katalyst Space’s LINK robotic servicing spacecraft captured this view of one of its solar panels in Earth orbit in August 2026. (Image credit: Katalyst Space))

Swift was incredibly productive, observing more than 2,000 GRBs and 1,400 supernovas over the course of its long scientific life. But it could have gathered even more data, had a dramatic rescue mission worked out.

In September 2025, NASA awarded the Arizona company Katalyst Space a $30 million contract to design, launch and operate a robotic spacecraft that would meet up with Swift and boost it to a higher orbit, thus extending its operational life.

Swift was falling back to Earth: It had no onboard thrusters to counteract the effect of atmospheric drag, which had been pulling the observatory down ever since it launched. The process was accelerating as Swift got lower, so Katalyst had to work fast. And the company did: It launched its refrigerator-sized, three-armed LINK servicing spacecraft on July 3, targeting an August capture of Swift.

That didn't happen, however. LINK suffered problems with its propulsion system and orientation-maintaining reaction wheels, which nixed the planned meetup. Still, it was a worthwhile effort, according to NASA.

"From the beginning, this was a high-risk, high-reward mission," Domagal-Goldman said in a statement on Sept. 25, the day that LINK itself crashed back to Earth.

"And while we'll be sad to see Swift's mission come to a close, we knew this boost effort would be worthwhile either way — advancing U.S. spacecraft servicing technology, challenging us to meet unprecedented mission timelines, and testing how we operate satellites to extend their time in low Earth orbit," he added.

Swift's crash today wasn't exactly unusual, by the way. At least three large objects — dead satellites or spent rocket bodies — fall back to Earth every day on average, a 2025 report found. And that number is bound to rise in the coming years, as humanity builds out more and more megaconstellations in Earth orbit.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Nov. 5 at 4:45 a.m. EST (0944 GMT) to include social media videos that may show the spacecraft's fiery demise.

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Voting in space: NASA astronauts cast ballots from International Space Station

The three Americans currently living off Earth just made sure their electoral voices were heard.

Anil Menon told us today (Nov. 3) that he and fellow NASA astronauts Luke Delaney and Jessica Watkins voted in the U.S. midterm elections from the International Space Station (ISS).

"Yes, you can even vote from space! All three U.S. crew members had the privilege of voting from space station. We filled out an electronic ballot and sent it securely to the election officials," Menon wrote in an X post this morning.

That post included a 29-second video, in which Menon — wearing, like many of us today, an "I voted" sticker — shows us his "voting booth."

It's actually his room on the ISS, Menon explained. "Inside of it is my computer, where I was able to fill out an electronic form and send it to Harris County so I could vote today," he said.

Most NASA astronauts register to vote in Texas' Harris County; it's home to Johnson Space Center in Houston, the agency's human spaceflight hub.

Americans have been able to vote from space since 1997, when Texas passed a law allowing this to happen. The first person to take advantage of the legislation was NASA astronaut David Wolf, who cast his ballot from Russia's Mir space station that same year. (The ISS didn't welcome its first crew until November 2000.)

"Just like any other American away from home, astronauts may fill out a Federal Post Card Application to request an absentee ballot," NASA officials wrote in an astronaut-voting explainer.

The process is somewhat involved, however.

"After an astronaut fills out an electronic ballot aboard the orbiting laboratory, the document flows through NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System to a ground antenna at the agency's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico," they added. "From New Mexico, NASA transfers the ballot to the Mission Control Center at NASA Johnson and then on to the county clerk responsible for casting the ballot. To preserve the vote's integrity, the ballot is encrypted and accessible only by the astronaut and the clerk."

NASA's Near Space Network enables astronauts on the International Space Station to communicate with Earth and electronically deliver ballots from space. (Image credit: NASA)

Delaney and Watkins launched to the ISS on Oct. 1 on SpaceX's Crew-13 mission. Menon has been there since mid-July, arriving aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

The trio currently share the orbiting lab with four other people — Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and cosmonauts Anna Kikina, Pyotr Dubrov and Sergey Teteryatnikov. Kutryk and Teteryatnikov are members of Crew-13, whereas Dubrov and Kikina shared the Soyuz with Menon.

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Rocket Lab launches Japanese Earth-observing satellite on 99th mission to date (video)

Rocket Lab launched its 99th mission to date today (Nov. 2), sending a private Japanese Earth-observing satellite toward orbit.

An Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site today at 11:41 a.m. EST (1641 GMT; 5:41 a.m. on Nov. 3 local New Zealand time).

The mission, which Rocket Lab calls "The Sea God Surveys," is carrying an Earth-observing radar satellite to low Earth orbit (LEO) for the Japanese company iQPS. All went according to plan: The spacecraft was deployed at an altitude of 357 miles (575 kilometers), Rocket Lab announced about 56 minutes after launch.

overhead drone photo of a black and white rocket launching at dawn from a seaside pad

A Rocket Lab Electron rocket launches "The Sea God Surveys" mission for the Japanese company iQPS from New Zealand on Nov. 2, 2026. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)

"The Sea God Surveys" was Rocket Lab's 10th launch to date for iQPS, which is assembling a constellation of three dozen synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites in LEO.

SAR satellites offer advantages over those that view our planet in optical wavelengths. They can peer through cloud cover, for example, and study our planet at night as well as during the day.

circular mission patch showing a rocket launching behind a large, snarling dragon rising out of the sea

The patch for Rocket Lab's "The Sea God Surveys" mission, which is expected to launch on Nov. 2, 2025. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)

Today's launch was the 99th overall for Rocket Lab and the 90th for the two-stage, 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to space. The workhorse vehicle has now flown 17 times this year.

Rocket Lab's other nine launches to date have been conducted by HASTE, a suborbital version of Electron that allows customers to test their tech in the hypersonic flight environment. HASTE (short for "Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron") debuted in June 2023 and generally flies classified payloads.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 11:55 a.m. ET on Nov. 2 with news of successful launch, then again at 1 p.m. EST with news of successful satellite deployment.

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Happy Halloween! SpaceX launches 27 Starlink satellites to orbit from California (video)

SpaceX celebrated Halloween with an early-morning launch from California.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Oct. 31) at 12:04 a.m. EDT (0404 GMT; 9:04 p.m. on Oct. 30 local time), sending 27 of the company's Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO).

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned, touching down about 8.5 minutes after launch on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 27 Starlink satellites from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base just after midnight ET on Oct. 31, 2026.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 27 Starlink satellites from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base just after midnight ET on Oct. 31, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)

It was the 18th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1093. The record for a SpaceX first stage is 37, set this past August by the booster B1067.

The Falcon 9's upper stage did its job as well today, deploying the 27 Starlink satellites into LEO about 62 minutes after launch. They're joining more than 11,000 spacecraft in the Starlink megaconstellation, which is by far the largest satellite network ever assembled.

a black and white rocket sits on the deck of a ship at sea at night

The Falcon 9's first stage rests on the deck of a drone ship shortly after launch on Oct. 31, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)
Previous Booster 1093 launches

SDA-T1TL-B | SDA-T1TL-C | Transporter-16 | 14 Starlink missions

Today's launch was the 118th Falcon 9 flight of 2026 so far. More than 70% of these missions have been devoted to building out the Starlink network.

SpaceX has also launched its Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets three times apiece this year. Falcon Heavy is an operational vehicle, but Starship remains in the test-flight phase. The company is currently gearing up for another Starship launch, which is expected to take place sometime in November.

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India launches next-gen navigation satellite to orbit (video)

India bolstered its homegrown satellite-navigation system today (Oct. 30).

A GSLV Mark II rocket launched the nation's NVS-03 satellite from Satish Dhawan Space Centre today at 2:21 p.m. EDT (1821 GMT and 11:51 p.m. India Standard Time).

Everything went well: The rocket deployed NVS-03 into geostationary transfer orbit as planned, officials with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced on X about 30 minutes after liftoff.

close-up photo of the bottom half of a white rocket launching at night

An Indian GSLV Mark II rocket launches the NVS-03 navigation satellite on Oct. 30, 2026. (Image credit: ISRO)

NVS-03 is the third next-gen satellite that India has launched for the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), its version of the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS).

NavIC operates on a smaller scale than its American counterpart, however. It's "a regional navigation satellite system designed to provide accurate Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) service to users in India as well as the region extending about 1,500 km [930 miles] beyond the Indian landmass, which is its primary service area," ISRO officials wrote in the NVS-03 launch brochure.

The Indian constellation currently consists of three fully functioning satellites, and it requires four to provide PNT services. So today's launch was a big deal — and a lot of eyes will be watching NVS-03's commissioning and checkout phase.

Today's launch was the 14th to date for the GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) Mark II, a three-stage rocket that stands 170 feet (52 meters) tall. Twelve of those 14 liftoffs have been successful.

The GSLV Mark II debuted in 2010, the same year its predecessor retired. That previous launchers, the Mark I, flew a total of six times, with two failures.

NVS-03 was the fourth Indian launch of 2026 and the third operated by ISRO. The fourth was mounted by Skyroot Aerospace, which in July became the first Indian company ever to successfully reach orbit.

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Watch Virgin Galactic’s new ‘Delta-class’ space plane take to the skies for the 1st time (video)

Virgin Galactic's first "Delta-class" space plane just made its maiden voyage.

The next-gen suborbital vehicle, named Apeiron (Greek for "Boundless"), lifted off for the first time ever on Thursday (Oct. 28). Flying beneath the wings of its carrier aircraft, VMS Eve, Apeiron traveled from Virgin's manufacturing site in Mesa, Arizona, to its launch site, Spaceport America in New Mexico.

"Seeing the ship fly beneath Eve to Spaceport America was a moment years in the making," Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement on Thursday. "To our team and our astronaut community: your Spaceship has arrived."

closeup of a space plane in flight, being hauled beneath the wings of a white, two-fuselage carrier aircraft

Virgin Galactic's first Delta-class space plane, named Apeiron, takes to the skies for the first time on Oct. 28, 2026, beneath the wings of its carrier plane, VMS Eve. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)

Apeiron will undergo a series of checks and tests at Spaceport America, leading up to a planned start of commercial service in the spring of 2027.

During those customer flights, Eve will carry Apeiron to an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13,700 meters), then drop the space plane. Apeiron will fire up its onboard rocket motor, which will carry the six-passenger, two-pilot vehicle to suborbital space.

Passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see the curve of Earth against the blackness of space before coming down for a runway landing back at Spaceport America.

Virgin Galactic has done this before, with its VSS Unity space plane. Unity flew seven commercial suborbital missions during its operational life, which ran from June 2023 to June 2024.

Apeiron and other Delta-class planes are built for a much heavier workload, according to Virgin Galactic.

"Designed to fly twice per week with a vehicle lifetime of more than 500 missions, each Spaceship in the next-generation fleet is built to support the economics of a scaled commercial operation, with increased flight cadence and a cost profile unprecedented in the industry," company representatives wrote in the same statement.

And there will indeed be a fleet, if all goes to plan. The second Delta ship is under construction, for example, and is expected to enter service in mid-2027, according to Virgin Galactic.

Apeiron and its Delta-class siblings will need to fly a lot to deal with Virgin Galactic's backlog: Nearly 700 ticket-holders are currently waiting to fly, according to the company. And demand remains high; the latest batch of seats, which were priced at $750,000 apiece, sold out. Virgin plans to sell the next tranche of tickets for $850,000 each, LATTE Luxury News reported.

A space plane seen from the side sitting on a runway.

Another look at Apeiron. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)

When Apeiron gets up and running, it will be the only game in town for suborbital space tourists.

Virgin Galactic once shared the skies with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which flew paying customers to the final frontier on its New Shepard vehicle. New Shepard conducted 14 crewed suborbital flights between July 2021 and January 2026 but is currently grounded while the company focuses on helping NASA land Artemis astronauts on the moon.

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See NASA’s Artemis III astronauts meet Trump at the White House as they train for a critical 2027 moon lander test flight (photos)

U.S. President Donald Trump just met another NASA Artemis crew.

The astronauts of NASA's Artemis III mission visited the Oval Office on Thursday (Oct. 28) and posed for a few photos with the president.

Their visit came nearly six months to the day after that of the Artemis II crew, who stopped by the White House on April 29, 19 days after the end of their historic flight around the moon.

a man seating at a desk in a fancy room talks to one man in a dark suit and five male astronauts in blue flight jackets

President Trump talks to the Artemis III crew on Oct. 28, 2026. (Image credit: The White House)

The Artemis III astronauts are NASA's Randy Bresnik (commander), Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio (mission specialists) and the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano (pilot). All four — plus backup crewmate Bob Hines of NASA, and agency chief Jared Isaacman — made the White House trip.

"It was a great day at the White House with President Trump and the talented crew of Artemis III," Isaacman wrote via X on Thursday.

Artemis III will launch to low Earth orbit in the summer of 2027, if all goes according to plan. The roughly two-week-long mission will aim to dock NASA's Orion capsule with SpaceX's Starship vehicle and/or Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

NASA selected Starship and Blue Moon to be the crewed lunar landers for the Artemis program, so Artemis III will provide valuable practice: On moon-landing missions, astronauts will launch aboard Orion and then meet up with either Starship or Blue Moon, which will carry them to the lunar surface and back up again.

That's slated to happen for the first time on Artemis IV, which NASA plans to launch in 2028.

We don't yet know which private lander(s) will launch on Artemis III; NASA would like to fly both of them, but it's unclear if both will be ready when the time comes.

That uncertainty applies to Artemis IV as well. We'll have to wait a bit before we know which spacecraft will have the honor of putting astronauts down on the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

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SpaceX fires up Starship upper stage ahead of landmark Flight 15 test launch (video)

SpaceX just checked another big box on the path to its 15th Starship test flight, which promises to be pretty epic.

The company conducted static-fire tests with Starship's Ship upper stage on Monday (Oct. 26) and Tuesday (Oct. 27), igniting its Raptor engines while the vehicle, known as Ship 42, remained anchored to the ground.

"Ship 42 static fires complete. The Starship preparing for Flight 15 performed a full duration, six-engine static fire, and fired a single Raptor engine to simulate a deorbit burn," SpaceX said in a Wednesday (Oct. 28) X post that shared video of the tests.

aerial drone photo of a tall black rocket firing its engines on a test stand

SpaceX conducts a six-engine static fire test with its Flight 15 Starship upper stage on Oct. 27, 2026. (Image credit: SpaceX)

The Ship 42 tests come on the heels of a successful 33-engine static fire with Booster 22, the Starship Super Heavy first stage that will conduct Flight 15. Everything therefore appears to remain on track for Flight 15, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said is targeted for sometime in November.

All Starship launches are worth watching, but this one should be particularly exciting. Musk said last week that SpaceX will try to catch both Ship and Super Heavy during Flight 15, provided the company can get regulatory approval to do so.

These catches are performed by the "chopstick" arms of the launch tower at Starbase, SpaceX's Starship launch and manufacturing hub in South Texas. The company has snagged Super Heavy on three Starship test flights to date but has not yet attempted a Ship capture.

Double chopstick catches will be the norm on operational Starship launches, if all goes to plan. This recovery strategy will reduce the time needed to get Super Heavy and Ship ready for reflight, significantly boosting launch cadences, according to SpaceX. (Starship is designed to be fully reusable, unlike SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, whose upper stages are expendable.)

SpaceX is already riding a historic success with Starship: The megarocket reached orbit for the first time ever on Flight 14, which took place on Sept. 28.

And Ship deployed 26 of the company's next-gen Starlink V3 satellites during that flight, starting the assembly of a new broadband constellation that Musk has said will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft.

Starlink V3 missions will therefore make up a significant percentage of Starship launches for the foreseeable future. But SpaceX also plans to use the megarocket to build an even bigger constellation in Earth orbit — Starmind, which could harbor one million of the company's AI data center satellites.