The mission was expected to last nearly 10 hours, complete about six orbits around Earth and end with a splashdown in the Pacific off the coast of Chile. SpaceX streamed live video from orbit through Starlink during the flight, which reached orbit on an insertion burn from a single Raptor engine into a roughly 275 km orbit after an engine failed during ascent.
The flight was Starship's first orbital attempt after 13 suborbital test flights. Its 26 satellites, the program's first revenue-generating payload, add up to 26 Tbps of capacity to the Starlink constellation, with each V3 providing up to 1 Tbps of downlink. SpaceX shares rose 1.1% after the ship reached orbit.