SpaceX Starship Reaches Orbit for First Time Despite Engine Failure

SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) sent Starship into orbit for the first time Monday despite an engine failure that briefly appeared to derail the mission, before deploying all 26 Starlink V3 satellites. Shares fell about 2% in premarket trading after SpaceX said Starship would be unable to reach orbit, then reversed the decline after the company changed course and completed the milestone. Engine Shutdown Briefly Puts Orbit in Doubt SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot initially told viewers during the company’s livestream that Starship would not reach orbit after one of its six engines shut down early. Minutes later, engineers determined the spacecraft could continue. Starship completed its orbital insertion burn around 25 minutes after launch, becoming the first Starship to reach orbit. The previous 13 Starship flights all followed suborbital trajectories. Reaching orbit is a major step toward turning Starship from a test vehicle into an operational launcher capable of deploying satellites and eventually flying reusable missions. The spacecraft then deployed all 26 production Starlink V3 satellites, completing the main commercial objective of the flight. Starlink Is the Commercial Payoff Monday’s satellite deployment is where Starship’s first orbit starts to matter commercially. The 26 V3s are production satellites intended to join the Starlink network, rather than test payloads. SpaceX says each can provide about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity, meaning the batch could eventually add roughly 26 Tbps to the network. Starship is designed to make that expansion much faster. SpaceX says a mature vehicle could carry as many as 60 V3 satellites in one mission, adding more than 20 times the network capacity of a Falcon 9 Starlink launch. If SpaceX can repeat Monday’s deployment at high frequency, it could add Starlink capacity in far larger increments than Falcon 9 allows, helping support more users and potentially improving the economics of expanding the network. SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said earlier this month that Flight 14 would become Starship’s first “revenue-generating flight.” $2 Trillion Case Rests on Reusability Reusability is central to SpaceX’s economic advantage. Falcon 9 transformed launch economics by routinely recovering and reflying its boosters, while Starship is designed to go further by reusing both stages. Pivotal Research analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak said this month that SpaceX’s roughly $2 trillion investment case “rests almost entirely” on solving Starship reusability. Polymarket traders put the chance of a successful splashdown at about 86% Monday morning, meaning Starship survives reentry and reaches the Pacific under control. The answer is still several hours away. Starship is expected to circle Earth about six times before an 11-second deorbit burn nearly nine hours after liftoff, followed by a planned Pacific splashdown roughly an hour later. A successful return would be a key step toward making Starship reusable, allowing it to fly again after refurbishment. Image: Shutterstock Read Also: Faraday Chairman Warns Cutting China Out of US Robot Supply Chain Too Fast Could Backfire