Starship is ready for takeoff.
The FAA license for Starship's first orbital attempt was reported issued late Saturday. Here's the Monday window at Pad 2, and the booster and heat shield fixes SpaceX is actually testing.
Starship Flight 14 has its FAA launch license.
So basically: the license was reported issued late Saturday, Sept. 26, which clears the last paperwork gate before SpaceX tries to put Starship in orbit for the first time. The window opens Monday, Sept. 28 at 8:15 a.m. ET (7:15 a.m. local) from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas, and runs 75 minutes, to about 9:30 a.m. ET.
The window
The license news came from Teslarati and from Launch Library 2, which cited an FAA record. As of Sunday, SpaceX’s own mission page still had the “pending regulatory approval” line on it, so treat the company’s next update as the final word.
SpaceX’s webcast starts about 30 minutes before liftoff on X and spacex.com. Boca Chica Beach has backup closures on Tuesday, Sept. 29 and Wednesday, Sept. 30, so a scrub doesn’t mean a long wait.
The stack is Booster 21 and Ship 41, and it finished a full wet dress rehearsal on Sept. 24.
What’s being tested
The booster. On Flight 13, Super Heavy fired all 33 engines on its boostback burn for the first time. Then the three center engines showed signs of ice clogging and the burn ended early. Only 8 of 13 engines relit for the landing burn, and the booster hit the Gulf hard. SpaceX says this booster has better filtering to the engines and software changes to make relights more reliable. It’s aiming for a soft splashdown offshore in the Gulf. No tower catch.
The ship. Ship 41 only does its orbital insertion burn if the flight team is sure it has enough working hardware for the deorbit burn later. Then it deploys 26 Starlink V3 satellites, does a single Raptor deorbit burn in space, and comes down in the Pacific west of Chile. SpaceX’s plan is about 275 km up, roughly six orbits, and a flight just under 10 hours.
The heat shield. SpaceX added extra retention on the tiles most likely to fall off during ascent, addressed spots where plasma could get behind tiles, and is flying some curved tiles meant to cut heating in the gaps. Two tiles pulled off Ship 40 after it floated in the Indian Ocean are flying again on Ship 41. That’s the first time Starship has reused a tile. Three of the Starlinks carry cameras to photograph the heat shield after they deploy.
Timeline
Per SpaceX’s timeline, the Starlink deploy starts about 34 minutes after liftoff and takes around 30 minutes. The deorbit burn is at about T+8 hours 52 minutes. If it launches right at 8:15 a.m. ET, the ship’s landing burn would come a little after 6 p.m. ET.
Reported air traffic planning slides list Flight 15 no earlier than Oct. 19. SpaceX hasn’t announced that.
My take
Orbit is the headline. But the booster relight fix and that reused tile tell you more about whether Starship can fly often. If both work Monday, that matters more than the orbit.
So basically — pass it on.