Starship компании SpaceX достиг орбиты и выпустил 26 спутников нового поколения Starlink

SpaceX’s Starship rocket lifted off from Starbase, Texas, at 8:49 a.m. EDT on Monday, marking the vehicle’s 14th test flight and its first full orbital insertion. After the Super Heavy booster separated and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, the upper stage reignited a Raptor engine for a 19-second burn, adding roughly 204 mph to achieve a stable orbit at about 171 miles (276 km) altitude.

The flight carried 26 of SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink V3 broadband satellites, each weighing about 2 metric tons and equipped with larger solar arrays and advanced antennas. The satellites were deployed sequentially from the payload bay using a pulley system, a method described by the company as similar to a “Pez dispenser.” According to SpaceX, the V3 satellites can provide up to 1 Tbps of capacity, ten times more than earlier models, and are intended to expand the network’s overall throughput and user speeds.

During ascent, one of Starship’s six upper-stage Raptor engines shut down early, while two of the 33 booster engines experienced failures. Despite these issues, flight controllers elected to proceed with the orbital insertion burn, citing confidence in the core systems needed for a safe de-orbit. > “We were only going to go if we were very confident in the core systems that have to work to get you out of orbit once you’re up there,” said Dan Huot, a SpaceX commentator.

After satellite deployment, the vehicle performed an early de-orbit burn and splashed down in the northern Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii at 11:57 a.m. EDT. The splashdown was uneventful, though the vehicle broke apart on impact, as expected for water landings.

SpaceX plans to increase Starship’s launch cadence, with potential flights from its Texas site and future launches from Kennedy Space Center and a new Florida pad. Upcoming objectives include longer orbital missions, in-orbit refueling tests, and eventual crewed lunar flights under NASA’s Artemis program.