SpaceX is preparing for its most ambitious Starship test flight yet, with Flight 14 scheduled to attempt the rocket’s first orbital mission on Monday, September 28. The 75-minute launch window opens at 8:15 a.m. ET from Starbase, Texas. If successful, Starship will spend close to 10 hours in space and complete roughly six orbits of Earth before a controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile.
Unlike the previous 13 test flights, which followed suborbital trajectories, Flight 14 will deploy 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites. Each V3 satellite is designed to add about 1 terabit per second of capacity to the Starlink network, bringing roughly 26 Tbps of total capacity on this mission—about 10 times the capacity delivered by a typical Falcon 9 launch with V2 Mini satellites.
The Federal Aviation Administration approved the launch and reentry plan on September 26, and SpaceX completed a wet dress rehearsal on Thursday. The mission is also tied to NASA’s Artemis program: NASA plans to test a version of SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System during Artemis III in Earth orbit in 2027, ahead of a crewed lunar surface landing during Artemis IV in 2028.
Starlink remains SpaceX’s largest and only profitable business segment, with about 11,000 active satellites versus roughly 650 for Eutelsat OneWeb. CEO Elon Musk said in August that Starlink could eventually deliver most of the world’s internet in countries where SpaceX operates. COO Gwynne Shotwell said this month that SpaceX also wants to put AI compute satellites into orbit starting in 2027.
SPCX stock has been volatile since its June IPO. Shares closed their first trading day at $160.95, surged to a peak of $225.64, then pulled back and have recently traded around $140 to $155. Over the past five sessions, SPCX dropped about 3%, and premarket trading Monday showed a further decline of about 0.75%. Wall Street analysts remain upbeat: Mizuho’s Brett Linzey reiterated a Buy rating with a $200 price target, while Bernstein’s Douglas Harned kept a Buy rating with a $248 target. The average analyst price target stands at $232.07, based on 26 Buys, five Holds, and two Sells.
