SpaceX plans to launch its massive Starship rocket early Monday in an effort to reach orbit with the spacecraft for the first time. According to SpaceX’s website, the 75-minute launch window begins at 8:15 a.m. ET, or 7:15 a.m. local time, from the company’s city of Starbase, Texas. The Federal Aviation Administration told CNBC via email that it issued a “license authorization for the launch and reentry operations of SpaceX Starship Super Heavy Flight 14” on September 26. With Starship’s 14th test flight, Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense company also plans to deploy 26 of its new Starlink V3 satellites. Starship is critical to SpaceX’s expansion plans. The company is counting on the giant rocket to scale its Starlink, or Connectivity, business, which was its largest and only profitable segment in the second quarter. SpaceX today operates about 11,000 active satellites in orbit, compared to about 650 for its competitor Eutelsat OneWeb. On SpaceX’s earnings call in August, Musk said, “It’s not out of the question that at some point Starlink will provide most of the world’s Internet, at least in the countries where we are allowed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries.” SpaceX went public in June in the largest initial public offering on record and is now valued at around $2 trillion. SpaceX has designed its Starship Super Heavy rocket and booster to be fully reusable and to deliver more cargo into orbit for less cost than any previous spacecraft. None of the previous 13 test flights were aimed at reaching orbit, but with the 14th flight, SpaceX hopes Starship will circle the planet. The company is preparing Starship for a major NASA test flight next year and intends to use the rocket to bring American astronauts back to the surface of the moon. SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell said during the All-In Summit earlier this month that the company also plans to use Starship to put “supercomputing in space,” launching “AI computing satellites” into orbit in 2027. The company’s new v3 satellites, which are produced at a SpaceX facility in Redmond, Washington, are equipped with solar panels that generate twice the power of previous generations. They are also larger and designed to be more powerful and transmit data more quickly than previous versions to Starlink subscribers. WATCH: SpaceX has an advantage its rivals can’t easily match
