With Booster 21 and Ship 41 stacked at the launch site as of early morning Sept. 23, SpaceX performed a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) no earlier than Sept. 24, ahead of Starship’s first-ever orbital flight attempt.

SpaceX has spent years testing and flying to reach this point, but with lessons learned from safer flight trajectories, Starship is now ready to attempt orbit.

Starship Recap

Starship has been in development in its many forms for at least 10 years, if not more. It began with subscale Raptor designs and the announcement of the Mars Colonial Transporter; over time, these evolved into the stainless steel Starship of 2019. This initial design kicked off Starhopper in 2019; this led to suborbital hop flights through 2020 and early 2021, before the push toward full-stack launches in mid 2021.

It took a few years to finalize designs and build the first launch pad, then Booster 7 and Ship 24 completed Starship’s first full-stack launch on April 20, 2023. While that flight didn’t go very well, SpaceX learned valuable lessons which then made the next several flights much more successful. The most successful flight was Flight 5, in which SpaceX caught Booster 12 on the tower, and Ship 30 completed its full mission in a perfect splashdown.

Block 2 was a step back: Flights 7 through 9 failed to make progress with the ship; then Ship 36 exploded at Massey’s. However, SpaceX pushed ahead, and Flights 10 and 11 ended the Block 2 and old-pad design era with successes. Then it was time for SpaceX to use what it had learned over six years of test flights to build a much more advanced launch pad and clean-sheet design launch vehicles.

Flights 12 and 13 had a few issues, mainly with the booster, as it was a clean-sheet design. Ship 39 had an engine-out on ascent but fully completed its mission, and Ship 40 performed perfectly. Both deployed their payloads and completed perfect reentries before splashing down on target in the Indian Ocean. Ship 40 survived its fall into the ocean and is currently aboard the ship Forte in the Atlantic Ocean, en route back to Starbase, TX.

Flight 14

Those flights were either low-altitude hops, high-altitude hops up to 10-12 km, or suborbital hops around 200 km. This wasn’t only to test landing systems and other components; the suborbital missions were also designed so that if Starship had control issues, as it did on a few flights, it would re-enter no matter what and not get stuck in orbit. The suborbital trajectory also let SpaceX learn how to catch a booster, get through stage separation multiple times, and collect mountains of data on the heat shield.

With all those missions under their belt, SpaceX engineers are now confident enough to attempt to get Starship into orbit, perform a deorbit burn, and return. 

Before SpaceX can launch Ship 41 and Booster 21, the teams are set to perform a WDR of the stack as early as Sept. 24, based on a new Temporary Flight Restriction, but it could be delayed if crews aren’t ready. This was the first WDR since Flight 12, not counting the T-0 abort on Flight 13 that basically turned into a WDR. SpaceX has a few reasons to complete extra testing before this important mission.

First, SpaceX wanted to confirm and test internal changes to Ship 41 and Booster 21 as a full stack before hopefully launching into orbit. Secondly, teams have added a new Liquid Oxygen (LOX) reclaim line to the launch tower.

This new line eliminates the famous tower vent by routing the LOX used for chilldown back to a pair of tanks for storage, venting, or recovery. This was added to prevent LOX from pouring onto the launch tower base roof during the final phase of chilldown, helping protect the machinery inside.

Starship Flight 14: WDR complete with simulated T-0. https://t.co/QWbyw1mNSx pic.twitter.com/rNZWQw62vN

— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) September 24, 2026

Lastly, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) may want more data before approving the revised launch license for this launch, and SpaceX might be able to obtain it by performing full-stack testing.

As stated above, SpaceX does not currently have the revised launch license or regulatory approval yet for this flight. Currently, the FAA Starship Launch License allows only Indian Ocean landings for the Starship vehicle. To fly this mission and land in the South Pacific and the Central Pacific Ocean contingency zones, SpaceX needs the FAA to add those as authorized landing locations to the launch license.

The license also needs to be updated for the revised mission profile, which has the ship enter orbit and coast for nearly eight hours before landing at T+ 9:50:30 in the mission. With all these factors needing to be added to the license, the FAA and SpaceX are making sure everything is in order so Starship can safely enter orbit, complete its mission, and then deorbit and land safely in the ocean.

It is unclear whether SpaceX will get approval to launch by Sept. 28 at 7:15 am CDT, but the notices put out for this launch currently run from Sept. 28 to Oct. 4.

Featured Image: Credit: NSF livestream.