SpaceX Starship test flights leave failure tally ambiguous

SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time in late September 2026 on its 14th test flight, deploying 26 Starlink satellites. The 407-foot-tall rocket lifted off from Starbase, Texas, at 8:49 a.m. EDT (12:49 UTC) with 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines producing up to 18 million pounds of thrust. The Super Heavy booster separated, turned back toward the Texas coast, and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, while the upper stage shut its engines a little more than eight minutes into flight.

A failed engine ended the orbital mission shortly after reaching orbit, preventing a planned six-revolution trek and falling well short of a 10-hour goal. The 26 satellites were the newest-generation Starlink broadband units, too large for Falcon 9, and were ejected from Starship’s cargo bay by pulleys and cables. Earlier Starship flights used deliberately reduced suborbital trajectories, but officials chose low-Earth orbit for Flight 14.

Engadget estimates that between four and 11 of the 14 Starship test flights have failed, depending on the counting method. The Motley Fool called the September 2026 flight SpaceX’s 14th successful launch and first to reach orbit.

• Key times:
• April 2023: The first Starship test flight exploded 65 miles short of its intended climb into Earth's atmosphere.
• The second flight saw the first-stage booster separate before both the booster and the vessel met fiery ends.
• Five months after the second flight, the third test flight met many objectives, reaching 145 miles in altitude before disintegrating on return.
• SpaceX then flew two back-to-back successful launches, ending with the launch tower catching Starship's first-stage booster.
• On test six, SpaceX called off its mechanical arm and crashed the Super Heavy booster into the Gulf of Mexico.
• Two months after test six, Starship 7 exploded over the Bahamas eight minutes after takeoff, drawing investigations from the FAA and the Turks and Caicos government.
• After Starship's eighth test exploded in space, the FAA opened another investigation that grounded planes across Florida.
• Starship 9 made minor improvements before spinning out of control, forcing SpaceX to cancel a planned deployment of eight mock satellites.
• In August 2025, Starship released its first cargo of Starlink satellites.
• Two months after August 2025, SpaceX successfully launched and landed its 11th Starship rocket, fulfilling all major objectives.
• The twelfth test flew the upgraded Starship V3 rocket, met several objectives, then crashed into the Gulf after engine failures, triggering another FAA investigation.
• In July 2026, Starship 13 deployed 20 of Starlink's new high-powered satellites, but its first-stage booster failed to stick the landing.

Musk posted the tweet after the first test flight in April 2023, as reported by Engadget. It read: “Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch.”

NASA said earlier in 2026 that Starship had fallen at least two years behind schedule since the agency chose SpaceX’s rocket in 2021 for its Artemis moon lander. NASA hopes to return to the moon in 2028 and requires Starship to meet the Artemis III deadline in summer 2027, while China aims to reach the moon by decade’s end.

In 2025, Musk predicted a 50 percent chance that Starship would land on Mars in 2026, ahead of the once-every-26-month Mars launch window closing in November 2026. SpaceX’s proposed one-million-satellite Starmind datacenter constellation cannot exist without a high-capacity reusable rocket such as Starship.

SpaceX plans a November 13, 2026 launch to catch both rocket and booster; Musk called it the first full recovery of an orbital launch vehicle and said it was “more likely than not” to succeed. Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever assembled, with cargo capacity five times greater than SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

BryceTech reported that SpaceX launched 85 percent of all spacecraft in 2025, including over half of the world’s orbital launches. Orbital Radar reported that Starlink’s 9,800 active satellites make up over half of the world’s total satellites.

The Motley Fool called the September 2026 orbital flight SpaceX’s 14th successful launch and first to reach orbit, carrying 26 Starlink satellites. It noted that Starship can deliver more than 100 metric tonnes into orbit in reusable configuration. Musk told a Q3 earnings call that SpaceX could reach $1 trillion in revenue by around the end of the decade, while Citi analysts project that level by 2031. The Motley Fool also reported that SpaceX’s valuation exceeds $2.1 trillion even though the company remains unprofitable.