Starship stacked for its first orbital shot; ExoMars lander passes backshell tests

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

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