Starship Flight 14 is now targeted for September 28, 2026, after being delayed from September 22.
The flight will use Super Heavy Booster 21 and Ship 41, part of the newer Starship Block 3 design.
It is intended to be Starship’s first true full orbital mission, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
SpaceX said it made hardware and software changes ahead of the flight.
The launch window opens at 8:15 am EDT from Starbase, Texas.
SpaceX said it made unspecified ‘modifications to hardware and software’ to address issues seen on the previous Starship flight.
For the first time on a Starship mission, SpaceX plans to fly two previously recovered heatshield tiles, marking an initial step toward heatshield tile reuse.
Starship launches from Starbase, SpaceX’s private launch site near Boca Chica in South Texas.
Starship is designed to be fully reusable and is central to SpaceX’s plans for satellite deployment, Moon missions under NASA’s Artemis programme, and eventual Mars missions.
The vehicle consists of the Super Heavy booster as the first stage and the Starship upper stage, both powered by SpaceX’s Raptor engines.
SpaceX delayed Starship Flight 14 from September 22 to September 28, 2026, without publicly specifying a reason.
The new launch window opens at 8:15 am EDT (12:15 UTC) on September 28, with a 75-minute window.
Flight 14 will use Super Heavy Booster 21 (B21) and Ship 41 (S41), both part of the newer Starship Block 3 vehicle design.
Booster 21 was rolled out to the launch pad at Starbase, Texas, on the night of September 20 into September 21 in preparation for the flight.
Booster 21 completed a 33-engine static fire test, and Ship 41 completed a 6-engine static fire test ahead of launch.
Flight 14 is intended to be Starship’s first true orbital mission; earlier flights had only flown ‘passively safe’ suborbital trajectories that avoided a full orbit.
SpaceX Starship full stack, Starbase, Texas (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
