Starlink 31-1 Review (Starship Flight 14)

As expected, Starship and Superheavy together rumbled off of pad 2 at 7:49 AM CT from Starbase, Texas. All thirty-three engines ignited on liftoff and for most of the ascent phase. One of the Raptors shut down at the end of the ascent phase, and two did not ignite on the boostback burn, but Super Heavy showed its engine-out capability. The booster came screaming down through the atmosphere and slowed down by a combination of the grid fins and then a landing burn of eleven of the thirteen inner rings of engines, and a soft touchdown. According to SpaceX, "Upon landing burn shutdown, the Super Heavy’s flight termination system was triggered in a demonstration of the safety hardware." At the time of the splashdown, the deluge at the pad came on to practice a catch of the booster. Hopefully, they are ready to attempt a catch on Flight 15!

Starship 41 successfully hot-staged from booster 21 and lit all six of its Raptor engines until halfway into the suborbital insertion burn when a vacuum Raptor engine went out, therefore extending the insertion burn by a few seconds. Once the five remaining healthy engines cut off SpaceX had a major decision to make on whether to do the orbital insertion burn based on if that one vacuum Raptor was an isolated issue or something that would affect the ability to deorbit the ship successfully and safely. After much thought at mission control, they decided that they were go for orbital insertion to make it the first Starship to reach orbital velocity, with much rejoicing from the SpaceX employees at Hawthorne!

After nominal orbital insertion, the ship oriented itself to deploy the 26 Starlink V3 satellites and successfully deployed all twenty-six of them, and all of them were verified to connect with the Starlink network, making this the first revenue-generating Starship launch. The ship then oriented itself to the coast orientation and began its planned six-orbit coast. Partially through the first orbit, SpaceX decided to take the deorbit opportunity on the second orbit north of Hawai'i. There was no reason given on the broadcast, but according to SpaceX later in the day, "Out of an abundance of caution given the engine issue experienced during ascent, the flight control team decided to limit the duration spent on orbit and proceeded with deorbiting Starship to a splashdown location in the northern Pacific Ocean".

The ship successfully performed a deorbit burn over southern Africa and conducted the S-curves to slow down as it successfully entered the previously established zones for splashdown. Its three sea-level Raptor engines ignited, and a soft splashdown 400 km north of the Hawaiian Islands for a sunrise splashdown.

What's next? With a soft touchdown of booster and ship... is a double catch possible... stay tuned. Given what SpaceX has already said, flight 15 might not be too far in the distant future! Is flight 16 from Florida still on the table by year's end? Many questions, but after today being 95% successful, the confidence is high that we will see more test and operational flights soon, and that the time between launches will not be months but weeks!