SpaceX's 15th Starship test flight reached orbit on Friday, deploying 26 Starlink satellites from the upper stage, but controllers aborted the Super Heavy booster's return to the launch tower after it malfunctioned, and it exploded after splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship upper stage is set to orbit Earth 15 times before attempting its own first-ever tower catch on Saturday. SpaceX had previously caught the booster three times, making this miss unexpected, and no cause has yet been given.
science.slashdot.org
· 2026-11-14
SpaceX's 14th Starship test flight reached orbit for the first time on Monday, deploying 26 functioning Starlink satellites and completing a controlled splashdown of its Super Heavy booster. However, engine failures—one on the booster during ascent and descent, and one on the upper stage during ascent—forced SpaceX to cut the planned 10-hour, six-orbit mission short, returning the ship to Earth after about three hours before it exploded on Pacific splashdown.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-29
On its 14th test flight, SpaceX's Starship reached Earth orbit for the first time, despite one of its more than three dozen engines shutting down early. The uncrewed vehicle deployed 26 advanced Starlink satellites before mission controllers cut the planned 10-hour flight to three hours, and the craft splashed down in the Pacific north of Hawaii, tipping over and catching fire.
cnet.com
· 2026-09-28
Dr. Tony Phillips of spaceweather.com has built a method to track Earth's upper atmosphere by analyzing orbital decay data from SpaceX's Starlink satellites, along with constellations from Planet Labs, Amazon Kuiper, and Eutelsat OneWeb. He uses the 'B-star' drag term buried in Space Force tracking data to measure how much the atmosphere expands in response to solar activity, finding a roughly two-day lag between solar radio flux changes and atmospheric response.
theregister.com
· 2026-09-25
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