DOMINANT ANGLE
France gauges the Starship flight in terms of economic balance of power: Le Monde notes that SpaceX "continues to lead the pack" on rockets and satellite internet, three months after its resounding stock market debut.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
Starship reached Earth's orbit for the first time during its 14th test flight, despite one of the six upper-stage engines failing (Le Monde, RFI).
- 02
26 Starlink V3 satellites were deployed, with a capacity of nearly one terabit per second, ten times higher than the previous generation, according to analyst Jean-Baptiste Thépaut, quoted by Le Monde.
- 03
The flight comes three months after SpaceX's initial public offering in June 2026, and the spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific earlier than expected without explanation from the company (RFI).
ANALYSIS
Paris, September 29, 2026. Starship cleared a historic milestone on Monday, September 28, according to the French press: during its fourteenth test flight from Starbase in Texas, the giant SpaceX launcher reached Earth's orbit for the first time, despite a malfunction in one of the six engines of its upper stage. "We will only go into orbit if everything seems to be in order on all levels," SpaceX engineer Jake Berkowitz had warned before takeoff, as reported by HuffPost France. The team nonetheless chose to continue the flight.
Beyond the technical achievement, Le Monde places the event on a strategic and commercial level: "SpaceX continues to lead the way in the strategic field of rockets and satellite internet supply." The upper stage deployed twenty-six third-generation Starlink satellites, dubbed "Starlink V3", which are more powerful than their predecessors. Analyst Jean-Baptiste Thépaut, from the Novaspace firm, sees this as a "major innovation": "These satellites have a capacity of nearly one terabit per second, ten times that of the previous generation of satellites, which is absolutely enormous." At the beginning of August, Elon Musk himself touted "a radical change, a significant change" during the presentation of SpaceX's financial results.
RFI and HuffPost France recall that this flight comes three months after SpaceX's resounding entry onto the stock market in June. The spacecraft, planned for ten hours and six orbits of the Earth, finally splashed down in the Pacific Ocean much earlier than expected, without SpaceX providing a reason; the launch had taken place at 07:46 (12:46 UTC) from the Brownsville complex, near the Gulf of Mexico. Air&Cosmos notes that no recovery was planned for this flight, either for the Starship spacecraft or the Super Heavy booster, after "years of battling with the FAA" to obtain authorization for a first orbital flight.
There remains, RFI emphasizes, "a long road ahead before commercial flights": Elon Musk ultimately plans to fly hundreds, even thousands, of Starships per year, to transport data centers into orbit or reach the Moon and Mars, a launch rate without precedent, according to the media.
SOURCES (5)
- HuffPost FranceMEDIUM
- BFMTVMEDIUM
- La TribuneMEDIUM
