{"id":904314,"date":"2026-09-24T23:48:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T23:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904314\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T23:48:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T23:48:11","slug":"spacexs-starship-megarocket-aces-launch-rehearsal-ahead-of-1st-orbital-test-flight-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/904314\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX’s Starship megarocket aces launch rehearsal ahead of 1st orbital test flight (video)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starship just cleared a major hurdle ahead of its first orbital flight.<\/p>\n

SpaceX announced this afternoon<\/a> (Sept. 24) that it has completed a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) for the next flight of Starship, the huge, fully reusable rocket it’s developing to help humanity settle the moon<\/a> and Mars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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During a WDR, mission teams fuel up a vehicle and go through all of the major steps they will take on launch day, without actually igniting the engines. With this key test in the books, Starship<\/a> remains on track to launch Monday morning (Sept. 28) on its 14th-ever test flight, which will take the 407-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) vehicle farther than it has ever gone before.<\/p>\n

Launch rehearsal complete ahead of Starship Flight 14 pic.twitter.com\/h5LBYyBqi4September 24, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Starship debuted in April 2023. That launch, and the next 12 that followed, all sent Starship’s upper-stage spacecraft, known as Ship, on a suborbital trajectory.<\/p>\n

On Flight 14, however, the 171-foot-tall (52-m-tall) Ship will go fast enough to enter orbit. Once up there, it will deploy 26 of SpaceX’s next-gen Starlink<\/a> Version 3 satellites \u2014 the first members of a constellation that Elon Musk<\/a> has said will eventually consist of 100,000 spacecraft<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Ship will stay up for a while, if all goes to plan; it will circle Earth six times before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile. (That splashdown zone is new as well; previous Starship flights targeted the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.)<\/p>\n

Starship’s first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, will make a splashdown of its own in the Gulf of Mexico. This will occur about seven minutes after launch.<\/p>\n

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That will not be the end game on operational Starship flights, however. SpaceX<\/a> wants to catch both Ship and Super Heavy back at the pad, using the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms. The company has already done this with Super Heavy<\/a> on three previous flights but has not yet tried to do so with Ship.<\/p>\n

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A view of the WDR from above. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

Starship Flight 14 is scheduled to launch from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas on Monday during a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT; 7:15 a.m. local Texas time).<\/p>\n

You can watch all the action live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX. And there should be a lot to watch: The company has said it aims to keep the stream going for all six of Ship’s orbits around Earth and its splashdown.<\/p>\n