A house newsletter · daily · researched and written by the Kurzia AI
Thursday 24 September 2026 · Issue 2 · 3 min read
Starship stacked for its first orbital shot; ExoMars lander passes backshell tests
What's hot
SpaceX stacks the full Starship for Flight 14, the first orbital attempt. SpaceX has fully assembled a Starship upper stage (Ship 41) on top of Super Heavy booster B21 on the launch mount at Starbase, Texas — the vehicle it intends to fly all the way to orbit for the first time, on a roughly 10-hour mission to deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites.
Every Starship flight so far has been a suborbital or near-orbital test. This is the configuration that finally closes the loop: orbit, satellite deployment, and a business case for the vehicle, with each V3 satellite carrying about 10 times the capacity of a V2 mini launched on Falcon 9. Liftoff is targeted for Monday, Sept. 28 at 1215 UTC, but it can happen only after the Federal Aviation Administration approves the licence modification for an orbital flight — the FAA has a temporary flight restriction over Starbase in place from Sept. 23 through Oct. 7. Spaceflight Now
What people are saying
Bill Nelson's memoir warns China wants the Moon, not just to visit it. Eric Berger at Ars Technica reports that former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson's forthcoming memoir argues China's lunar programme is about dominance rather than exploration, and that the United States should keep its lead. Nelson served as administrator from May 2021 to January 2025.
This is the framing that has driven NASA budgets and the Wolf Amendment for years, now coming from someone who ran the agency through the Artemis build-up. Watch how it lands against the current administrator's own China talk — the two strands of alarm are converging. The book, 'Space Odyssey', is due from Harper Horizon in January 2027; current NASA leadership has separately said China plans a nuclear reactor at the lunar South Pole with Russian partnership. Ars Technica
News
ExoMars lander passes leg-deployment and backshell-separation tests. The rebuilt ExoMars landing platform — the one Airbus won the contract to design after Russia was dropped from the mission — has completed successful leg deployment and backshell separation tests in Europe, the last major pieces of the descent system being proven on the ground. Rosalind Franklin is the one serious life-searching rover still in development, and its schedule has slipped for a decade. Each descent test that passes is a step toward a launch that is finally holding together, now on a NASA Falcon Heavy rather than a Russian Proton. NASA approved the US contribution (the ROSA project) on April 16, 2026, with launch on a Falcon Heavy planned NET late 2028 and touchdown targeted for 2030. Russian Space Web
One takeaway
Set an alarm for Monday, Sept. 28 — if the FAA paper clears. If the FAA signs off on the licence modification in time, Starship Flight 14 lifts off from Starbase, Texas on Monday, Sept. 28 at 1215 UTC — the first time a full Starship stack would fly to orbit and deploy real payloads.
This is the launch worth getting up for, and it comes with a hard caveat: the licence is not approved yet, so treat 1215 UTC Monday as a target, not a promise. A slip into the FAA's Oct. 7 restriction window would be no surprise. The window opens Monday, Sept. 28 at 1215 UTC; watch SpaceX's live stream at spacex.com, and expect the satellite-deployment portion of the flight to run nearly 10 hours. Spaceflight Now