SpaceX Starship reaches orbit on its 14th test flight

It's taken a while, but Starship has finally made it to orbit. 

What? Hasn't Starship already been into space?

Yes, but there's a space and there's space. A number of previous Starship flights (i.e. the ones that didn't blow up) had achieved a large velocity and flown above the Earth's atmosphere. However, their flight plans meant they weren't quite going fast enough at the right angle to stay in orbit. All fell back to Earth without going around the planet at least once. On Monday, 28th September, SpaceX’s enormous Starship finally flew at the right angle and speed.

Flight 14 lifted off from Starbase in Texas and became the first Starship to reach orbit. It also delivered 26 working Starlink V3 satellites.

What exactly is an orbit?

Reaching orbit is a bit strange. It requires enough sideways speed to keep falling around the Earth while being high enough to stop almost of the drag from the atmosphere. Gravity hasn’t switched off; the ground simply keeps curving away underneath you. It’s a wonderfully odd arrangement, and you're not strictly weightless in when in orbit.  You're basically falling the entire time.

Rockets don't just go up to reach orbit, they need to go sideways as well. 

What is escape velocity?

Everyone knows that if you jump up, you soon land back on your feet due to the effects of gravity. How fast you need to jump before you overcome the Earth's gravity is the escape velocity of a body such as a star or a planet. For Earth, it's about 11.2 km per second or about 40,270km per hour. 

All crewed mission to travel to the Moon first reached orbit and then performed another "burn" to raise the velocity to escape from Earth. NASA describes this manoeuvre as translunar injection.

Some rough edges 

Going back to Starship, one of the upper stage’s engines shut down early. If like me, you sat up watching the launch on Monday night, the commentary suggested for a while the attempt to enter orbit would be abandoned.

Engineers then determined that the remaining engines could still get the job done, and Starship went ahead and reached orbit.  The satellites were deployed successfully, but SpaceX shortened the planned ten-hour mission to about three hours after the engine trouble. Starship re-entered the atmosphere and splashed down north of Hawaii, where it tipped over and with a "small" kaboom. 

What does this mean for trips to the Moon and Mars?

Getting into orbit and delivering useful cargo is a substantial step. However, it’s still some distance from the reliable, reusable transport system SpaceX wants to build.  There's a lot of data from this flight and as they normally do, SpaceX engineers will be pouring over it in preparation for the next missions.  

NASA’s plans to use Starship for lunar landings give the programme significance beyond launching more internet satellites with Moon and even Mars missions on the agenda. 

The evening sky above our heads for October 2026

Astro guru Geoff Wyatt has kindly provided an updated sky chart for this month. 

Some of our winter favourites are slipping into the glare of the Sun, and we welcome back our regular summer delights. Looking forward to the hundreds of new Smart Telescope owners who purchased their new gear from us over the past few month take a crack at M42!

Saturn at Opposition for 2026

Spring and summer '26 are great for viewing the Solar System gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn. 

This Sunday evening, 4th October, Saturn reaches opposition. Earth passes between Saturn and the Sun, placing the ringed planet opposite the Sun in our sky and close to its nearest point to us for the year.

Saturn during the 2026 opposition season taken by Glenn Pickford on the 29th of September. Check out his post to the BINTEL Society Facebook page here. 

You'll be able to catch Saturn right throughout the evening. The rings have opened up slightly since they were totally edge on last year and you can see the in just about any telescope with an aperture of 70mm and above.

As I'm always keen to mention, oppositions are not blink and you miss it events. Go out and enjoy Saturn over the coming weeks and we'll all looking forward to seeing Jupiter at its best in a few months as well.

Cheers,

Earl White

BINTEL

3rd October 2026