SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time on Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, after an engine failure nearly ended the attempt minutes after liftoff. Starship Flight 14 lifted off from Starbase, Texas, at 8:48 a.m. ET. One of the six Raptor engines on the upper stage shut down early, and SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot initially told livestream viewers the ship would not reach orbit. Minutes later, engineers confirmed Starship could still attempt its orbital insertion burn. About 25 minutes after launch, the ship fired a single Raptor engine and became the first Starship ever to reach orbit. All 13 previous Starship test flights were suborbital. Starship then deployed 26 production Starlink V3 satellites, its first operational payload. SpaceX says each V3 is built for about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity, roughly 10 times a V2 Mini, so this batch could add about 26 Tbps to a network of roughly 11,000 satellites. SpaceX says a mature Starship could carry about 60 V3s per launch,...