SpaceX Starship Flight 14 live updates: Vehicle stacked less than one week until Starship's first orbital launch attempt
SpaceX is gearing up for Starship's most ambitious mission ever.
Starship is stacked on the pad at Starbase
We are just under one week away from the next launch of SpaceX's giant Starship rocket. The company is targeting a 75-minute window that opens at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1215 GMT) on Tuesday, Sept. 28, for liftoff of Starship's Flight 14 test launch, and the vehicle's first attempt to reach orbit.
SpaceX rolled the mission's Super Heavy booster (Booster 21) to Pad 2 at the company's Starbase, Texas, facility earlier this week, where its Ship upper stage (Ship 41) was delivered also last night.
The two stage are now stacked, according to NASA Spaceflight, ahead of a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) expected to take place on Thursday (Sept. 24). SpaceX announced Flight 14's Sept. 28 target last week, though the mission has yet to receive regulatory approval for launch.
Flight 14 is poised to be Starship's first time in orbit, and expected to last much longer than previous flights — about nine hours longer than the spacecraft's previous one-hour suborbital hops. Booster 21 and Ship 41 are both slated for soft splashdowns at sea; Super Heavy, following stage separation, and Ship following approximately six complete orbits, according to SpaceX's Flight 14 mission page.