Category: Launches & Spacecraft

The first Starship launch from Florida may be just a few months away.

All 14 of the SpaceX megarocket's test flights to date have lifted off from the company's Starbase site in South Texas — including the most recent, on Sept. 28, which saw Starship reach orbit for the first time.

But SpaceX is working hard to get three pads on Florida's Space Coast ready for Starship. And one of them, historic Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), is nearly there, according to the company.

"Things are going super well at 39A," Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said during a briefing on Oct. 1 that primarily discussed that day's launch of the Crew-13 astronaut mission to the International Space Station.

The pad's new Starship launch tower is nearly complete, as is most other essential construction at the site, according to Scheiman.

"We've essentially done a lot of the initial build of the structures and the systems needed for launching Starship, and we're beginning to step into the sort of acceptance testing and operational testing prior to activation," she said. "So, we're kind of through the main construction and going into the proofing, testing — activation testing."

The work at Pad 39A began in late 2021. The fact that it's taken so long shouldn't be surprising, for Starship requires some very specialized infrastructure. After all, it's the biggest rocket ever built, standing about 408 feet (124 meters) tall. For comparison, SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles — the only rockets that have flown out of Pad 39A since SpaceX started leasing it from NASA in 2014 — are both about 230 feet (70 m) tall.

Starship is also designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, and its recovery operations are very different than those of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. The first stages of those two rockets touch down either on a ship at sea or on a designated landing pad close to the launch site. But Starship's two stages — its Super Heavy booster and Ship spacecraft — are designed to come back to the launch pad, where they will be caught by the giant tower's "chopstick" arms. So finishing construction of Pad 39A's new Starship tower will be a very big deal.

Starship also employs different engines than the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy — Raptors rather than Merlins. Raptors burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen (LOX), rather than rocket-grade kerosene and LOX like Merlins, so the new Starship-friendly 39A needs a new tank farm to feed in this different mix of propellant.

SpaceX plans to launch at least one more Starship test flight from Starbase before flying the megarocket out of KSC, Scheiman said on Oct. 1 — meaning the first Florida Starship launch come come as soon as Flight 16.

The company has not yet announced target dates for upcoming Starship launches, but provisional planning documents identify Oct. 19 and Oct. 30 as possible "no earlier than" dates for Flight 15 and Flight 16, respectively. Those dates may be a bit aspirational, but they suggest that SpaceX aims to fly Starship again soon, and to launch two missions in relatively quick succession. (For perspective: Starship has flown three times so far this year — on May 22, July 24 and Sept. 28.)

Whenever Starship breaks in the new Pad 39A, it will be something of a blast from the past. The launch complex was originally built in the 1960s to host launches of a different megarocket — NASA's Saturn V, which sent the Apollo moon missions skyward. Pad 39A was the jumping-off point for some of the most iconic Apollo flights, including Apollo 8 in December 1968 and Apollo 11 in July 1969.

This tradition will continue, if all goes according to plan: NASA picked Starship's Ship upper stage to be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to build a base near the moon's south pole over the next five years or so.

Ship is scheduled to fly for the Artemis program for the first time on Artemis III, a planned 2027 docking test in Earth orbit between the vehicle and NASA's Orion capsule. And that Ship liftoff will take place from Pad 39A, Scheiman said.

There's more pad work going on in Florida as well. Late last year, the U.S. Air Force gave SpaceX permission to fly Starship from two pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which is next-door to KSC. Those two pads — SLC (Space Launch Complex)-37A and SLC-37B — could eventually host 76 Starship liftoffs per year between them.

SpaceX has already made considerable progress on SLC-37A and SLC-37B, according to Scheiman. "If you look towards Launch Complex 37, you can see the beginnings of that Starship tower," she said on Oct. 1.

And SpaceX plans to break ground next year on an even bigger Starship launch site — the $100 billion, 12-pad Starbase Louisiana complex. Twelve new pads seems like overkill, unless you know that SpaceX aims to launch more than 10,000 Starship missions per year by 2030.

The vast majority of those liftoffs will serve to assemble two SpaceX megaprojects in Earth orbit: the next-gen Starlink broadband network, which will consist of about 100,000 satellites, and Starmind, an AI data center constellation that will feature a million spacecraft, according to Elon Musk.

South Korea just launched its first orbital mission of the year.

The milestone came on Tuesday night (Oct. 6), when the homegrown Nuri rocket lifted off from the nation's Naro Space Center, carrying 15 satellites skyward.

Liftoff occurred at 11:25 p.m. EDT (0325 GMT and 12:25 p.m. local time on Oct. 7). Almost everything went well: All but one of the payloads was successfully delivered to low Earth orbit as planned, according to the state-run Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).

Five of those payloads are microsatellites for South Korea's nascent New-space Earth Observation Satellite Constellation for National Safety (NEONSAT) network.

"Each NEONSAT weighs less than 100 kilograms [220 pounds] and carries an electro-optical camera capable of distinguishing objects as small as 1 meter [3.3 feet] in black-and-white images and 4 meters [13.1 feet] in color images," South Korea's Yonhap news agency wrote in a prelaunch preview.

"The satellites will monitor the Korean Peninsula and surrounding areas for national security and disaster response," Yonhap added.

Two NEONSAT satellites had launched before today, both aboard Rocket Lab Electron vehicles. The first went up in April 2024, and the second flew in January of this year. Five more will launch atop a Nuri next year, rounding out the constellation, according to Yonhap.

The other 10 satellites that went up tonight are cubesats, which were provided by a variety of operators. And it was one of these cubesats that experienced difficulty on Tuesday night: PERSAT02, which was developed by the South Korean company Quaternion, failed to deploy, KARI wrote in an X post about two hours after launch.

The 155-foot-tall (47 meters) Nuri, also known as KSLV-II (Korean Space Launch Vehicle-II), is South Korea's first fully homegrown orbital launcher. It is jointly operated by KARI and the company Hanwha Aerospace.

The three-stage rocket failed during its debut mission in October 2021 but is now riding a streak of four straight successes.

"Through this 5th launch, we have further elevated the Nuri rocket's capability to perform space transportation missions by precisely deploying multiple satellites into orbit in a single launch," KARI wrote in the same X post. "We sincerely thank all citizens for your warm interest and support for the successful flight of the Nuri rocket."

We now have a launch date for Starship's most ambitious mission to date.

SpaceX announced today (Sept. 15) that it's targeting Sept. 22 for the first orbital flight of Starship, the fully reusable megarocket that the company is developing to help humanity settle the moon, Mars and more.

Liftoff, from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, will occur during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT and 7:15 a.m. local Texas time). You can watch it live here at Space.com when the time comes.

The upcoming flight will be the 14th overall for Starship, which debuted in April 2023 and has flown twice so far in 2026. But the 408-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) vehicle's first 13 jaunts were all suborbital, so Flight 14 will be a landmark.

"By going to orbit, the next phase of developing Starship to be fully and rapidly reusable can begin," SpaceX wrote in a Flight 14 mission description.

"This will also mark the first time we plan to deploy Starlink V3 satellites into the constellation, delivering a payload that will dramatically expand connectivity speeds and reliability around the world," the company added.

Starlink, SpaceX's network of broadband satellites in low Earth orbit, currently consists of more than 11,000 active spacecraft. None of those are the larger, more capable V3 version, which are designed to launch on Starship.

Flight 14 will carry up 26 of these next-gen craft — the first of many, if all goes to plan. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said the company wants the Starlink megaconstellation to eventually consist of 100,000 V3 satellites.

Three of the Starlink craft launching on Flight 14 have been outfitted with cameras and will photograph the heat shield on Starship's upper stage, known as Ship, after deployment. SpaceX will use this imagery to study and potentially improve the heat shield, which protects Ship during its return trip through Earth's atmosphere.

If all goes according to plan on Sept. 22, the 171-foot-tall (52-m-tall) Ship will complete six orbits of Earth at an altitude of about 171 miles (275 kilometers). The vehicle will then maneuver its way to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile about 10 hours after launch, SpaceX wrote in the mission description.

That's a very different plan than previous Starship flights. On those suborbital missions, Ship stayed aloft for just 65 minutes or so, did not complete an orbit of Earth and came down in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.

But Flight 14 will be more of the same for Starship's first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy. If all goes to plan, the giant rocket will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after liftoff, as it has done on a number of previous flights.

So there will be no catch — of either Ship or Super Heavy — by the "chopstick" arms of Starbase's launch tower on Flight 14. SpaceX has pulled off tower catches of Super Heavy on three occasions to date but has never done so with Ship. This recovery method will eventually be the norm on Starship flights, leading to faster and more efficient reuse of the vehicle, Musk has said.

So, while Flight 14 aims to check a very big box — reaching orbit — other milestones will be reserved for future flights. A Ship tower catch will be among the most anticipated, along with refueling the vehicle in orbit, something that will be required for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond.

SpaceX launched its second classified mission for the U.S. Space Force in less than a week tonight (Sept. 16).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 9:07 p.m. EDT (6:07 p.m. local California time; 0107 GMT on Sept. 17).

We don't know much about tonight's mission, which was called USSF-259. SpaceX's webcast didn't shed any light of note; it ended shortly after the Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth for a landing in the Pacific Ocean atop a drone ship about 8.5 minutes after launch.

That touchdown was the 13th for this particular booster, which is designated 1097. One of the booster's previous landings was a big milestone for SpaceX. This past April, B1097 pulled off SpaceX's 600th touchdown of an orbital-class rocket, during a launch that sent 25 of the company's Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit.

Tonight's mission was the second that SpaceX has flown for the U.S. Space Force in a six-day span: A Falcon 9 launched the similarly classified USSF-153 from Vandenberg on Sept. 10.

Tonight's launch was SpaceX's 110th of 2026. The vast majority of the company's flights so far this year — 106 of them, in fact — have been performed by the workhorse Falcon 9.

The powerful Falcon Heavy has launched twice in 2026, as has SpaceX's next-gen megarocket, Starship. Both Starship liftoffs this year have been suborbital test flights. The next Starship launch, which is expected to occur in the next two weeks, will apparently take the vehicle orbital for the first time.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 11:50 p.m. ET on Sept. 15 with the new launch date of Sept. 16. It was updated agai at 9:28 p.m. ET on Sept. 16 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.

Two European Earth-observing spacecraft lifted off from South America tonight (Sept. 14).

A Vega C rocket carrying the FLEX and Copernicus-3C satellites launched from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 9:21 p.m. EDT (10:21 p.m. local time in Kourou and 0121 GMT on Sept. 15).

Both FLEX and Sentinel-3C were deployed as planned. They were released at an altitude of about 509 miles (820 kilometers), and both were flying freely by 116 minutes after launch.

The 875-pound (397-kilogram) FLEX will detect and monitor vegetation fluorescence, which explains its name (a shortening of "Fluorescence Explorer"). By doing so, it will map plant photosynthetic activity — something no satellite can do at the moment, according to ESA.

FLEX's data will be important not only "for a better understanding of the global carbon cycle, but also for agricultural management and food security," ESA wrote in a FLEX mission desription. "This is of particular relevance due to demand the growing world population is placing on the production of food."

Sentinel-3C is part of the European Union's Copernicus Earth-observation program. The 2,520-pound (1,1143-kg) satellite will continue the Sentinel-3 line, which is aging but still going strong in low Earth orbit; Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B, which launched in 2016 and 2018, respectively, remain active.

"Like its two older siblings in orbit, Sentinel-3C carries a suite of cutting-edge instruments that measure systematically Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics," ESA wrote in a Sentinel-3C description. "It provides essential information in near-real time for ocean and weather forecasting."

The 115-foot-tall (35-meter-tall) Vega C debuted in July 2022 and had seven flights under its belt before today, six of them successful.

The rocket was developed by the European Space Agency and originally operated by the France-based company Arianespace. The Italian outfit Avio now runs the vehicle's liftoffs, however; today's launch was the second Avio has managed.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:35 p.m. ET with news of successful liftoff, then again at 1:10 a.m. ET with news of successful satellite deployment.

SpaceX lofted three telecom satellites to orbit today (Sept. 13) on a milestone mission for the company.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 2:49 p.m. EDT (1849 GMT), carrying the final three satellites for Luxembourg-based SES' O3b mPOWER constellation.

It was the 700th mission to date for SpaceX's Falcon rocket family, according to the company. That family first spread its wings in March 2006 when the Falcon 1 debuted. The Falcon 1 flew a total of five times, twice successfully, before giving way to the workhorse Falcon 9 in 2010. The Falcon 9 has conducted the vast majority of the family's flights; the only other member, the still-active Falcon Heavy, has launched 13 times to date.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth a little less than nine minutes after launch today, landing in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas." It was the 29th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1080.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the O3b mPOWER trio to medium Earth orbit (MEO). The satellites were deployed as scheduled, being released at an altitude of 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) over a 14-minute span starting roughly 33.5 minutes after launch.

SES already operates 10 O3b mPOWER satellites in MEO. The spacecraft that went up today will complete the constellation, which is "purpose-built to deliver predictable low latency, exceptional throughput and unprecedented flexibility for industries where uptime isn’t optional," according to the company.

"It transforms how networks operate by pairing advanced software defined satellites with an intelligent ground and software ecosystem — ensuring guaranteed performance, even as global bandwidth demands surge," the company wrote.

The O3b mPOWER satellites, which are built by Boeing, weigh about 3,750 pounds (1,700 kilograms) apiece. SpaceX has launched all of them, on six Falcon 9 launches beginning in December 2022.

Today's launch was SpaceX's 107th orbital mission of the year. The Falcon 9 has performed 105 of those flights, with the Falcon Heavy conducting the other two.

SpaceX has also launched two suborbital test flights of its Starship megarocket in 2026 and is gearing up for the third, which apparently will take the giant vehicle orbital for the first time.

SpaceX launched a secret mission for the U.S. Space Force today (Sept. 10) from California's central coast.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 11:42 a.m. EDT (1542 GMT; 8:42 a.m. local time), kicking off a mission called USSF-153.

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes later, landing in the Pacific Ocean atop the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 27th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1801. The record for a SpaceX rocket is 37, set last month during a launch of the company's Starlink internet satellites.

USSF-153 is a classified mission, so little is known about its payloads — what they are or where exactly they're headed. We didn't get much clarity from the webcast, which ended shortly after the Falcon 9's first stage landed.

However, the location of that touchdown provided some potentially useful information about USSF-153, according to NextSpaceflight.com.

The mission might be carrying "a batch of classified LEO [low Earth orbit] satellites for a U.S. government entity based on SpaceX's Starshield satellite bus, based on locations of rocket stage drop zones being exact fits with previous Starlink Group 15 launches," the outlet wrote.

"Starshield leverages SpaceX's Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts," SpaceX wrote in a description of the Starshield program.

Today's launch was the 104th Falcon 9 mission of 2026. Eighty of the rocket's flights this year have been dedicated to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 11,000 active spacecraft.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 11:55 a.m. ET on Sept. 10 with news of successful launch and rocket landing.