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Starship Orbital Debut: Satellites Deployed, Engine Questions & Crew-13 | Sep 28-29
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Starship reached orbit on September 28th, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites despite early engine shutdowns — a working mission, not just a test. Plus Crew-13's final countdown, Webb's rare quadruple gravitational lens, and what Falcon 9's retirement really means.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Starship reached orbit on September twenty-eighth. That sentence alone would have seemed ambitious two years ago.
The engine reliability question doesn't go away with a single successful deployment. Both the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage experienced premature shutdowns during the September twenty-eighth flight.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed on September twenty-eighth that SpaceX intends to retire the Falcon nine and Dragon platforms to concentrate on Starship. That's a significant statement.
On a tighter timeline, SpaceX Crew-thirteen completed its final dress rehearsal on September twenty-ninth, targeting a launch to the International Space Station on October first at eleven ten a.m. Eastern.
Away from the launch pad, the James Webb Space Telescope released its September Picture of the Month. The subject is galaxy cluster MACS J zero-four-five-four point one minus zero-three-zero-zero, sitting roughly five billion light-years away.
The two metrics to track from here are Starship engine reliability data from the next test flight, and any concrete announcement on Starship's commercial payload terms. Those two things will tell you whether September twenty-eighth was a turning point or just a milestone.
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