Why Starship’s riskiest launch yet is such a big deal for Elon Musk’s SpaceX

SpaceX is gearing up for its most important Starship launch yet.

If all goes to plan, the 400-foot-tall rocket will blast off from SpaceX’s Texas launch site at around 7:46 am Central Time on Monday.

Starship’s 14th test flight will see the rocket attempt to reach orbit for the first time.

It will also mark the first time that the megarocket has launched with real, revenue-generating cargo.

Starship will carry 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the latest version of the low-earth orbit satellites that SpaceX uses to beam its Starlink internet service around the globe.

The successful deployment of these satellites is a key focus of today’s launch.

Unlike previous flights, SpaceX is not planning to catch Starship’s giant booster in the chopstick arms of its launch tower when the rocket returns to Earth.

Instead, both the booster and Starship’s upper stage are set to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.

While that approach reduces the risk of things going wrong on landing, there are more potential failure points than in previous Starship missions.

Starship must now enter a stable orbit, deploy satellites, keep its systems working for nearly 10 hours, then reignite an engine to deorbit and survive a controlled reentry.

As with any rocket launch, the window is subject to last-minute changes due to factors such as weather conditions.

Reaching orbit and deploying Starlink satellites is a critical step in Elon Musk’s ambitious plans for Starship, which the billionaire has said could launch as often as once a day within the next year.

Launching larger V3 satellites on Starship, which has far greater capacity than SpaceX’s Falcon 9, will allow the company to supersize its Starlink constellation.

The satellite internet service has become one of the most lucrative parts of SpaceX’s business, and was the source of the majority of the company’s revenue last year.

SpaceX has submitted plans to launch 100,000 Starlink satellites in the coming years, up from around 11,000, and Musk has said the satellite internet service could supply the majority of the world’s internet in less than a decade.

Meeting those ambitious goals, which underpin the $2 trillion market cap SpaceX secured after a record-breaking public listing in June, hinges on Starship flying regularly.

SpaceX executives have estimated that Starship, which, unlike the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, will be fully reusable, could reduce the cost of launching cargo into space by up to 10 times compared to the Falcon 9.

That will be critical in enabling SpaceX to build and service massive satellite constellations while still turning a profit, and opens the door for some of Musk’s science fiction-inspired plans.

SpaceX has indicated it aims to launch as many as 1 million satellites functioning as orbital data centers, with Musk betting that training large language models in space will give the company an edge in the AI race.

The company has also made Starship a central part of its long-term plans to build a human (and robot) presence on the moon, and eventually settle on Mars.