DOMINANT ANGLE
Bucharest notes that technical resilience counted more than the announced prowess: an engine failure, a shortened flight, but an orbit finally reached.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
26 Starlink V3 satellites have been deployed at an altitude of approximately 269 km, all operational according to Elon Musk (Mediafax).
- 02
One of the three main engines shut down prematurely after liftoff; SpaceX initially announced the abandonment of the orbital objective before reconsidering (Mediafax).
- 03
The mission, scheduled for ten hours and six revolutions, was reduced to three hours before splashing down in the Pacific, west of Chile (Digi24).
ANALYSIS
Bucharest, Tuesday, September 29, 2026. The Romanian press first notes the technical suspense more than the announced triumph. According to Digi24, which cites Agerpres, Starship took off from the Starbase complex, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, Texas, at 12:46 GMT on Monday, September 28. As tall as a 40-story building and composed of the Super Heavy booster and the Ship 41 stage, the rocket successfully executed the hot separation two minutes and 34 seconds after takeoff.
But one of the three main engines of the spacecraft shut down prematurely. Mediafax reports that SpaceX had initially announced that Starship would not attempt to reach orbit, before engineers determined, a few minutes later, that the remaining engines were sufficient to continue the combustion sequence. SpaceX then announced on X that Starship had reached orbit on its first attempt and delivered Starlink satellites for the first time.
The 26 Starlink V3 satellites were deployed at an altitude of approximately 269 kilometers; Elon Musk stated that they were all functioning normally. Mediafax highlights the commercial scope of the flight: it is the first revenue-generating payload carried by Starship, while the final design of the ship remains in development. The V3 satellites can carry up to ten times more data than the V2 mini generation, and SpaceX plans to launch batches of up to 60 V3 satellites per mission in the future.
The mission, scheduled to last around ten hours and six revolutions around the Earth, was reduced to three hours due to the engine failure, before splashing down in the Pacific, west of Chile. The Booster 21 propeller, for its part, performed its braking burn before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico as planned.
Digi24 recalls that this fourteenth test flight is preparing the regular service that SpaceX wants to launch this year, as well as NASA's future lunar missions. For the Romanian press, the lesson lies less in the orbit achieved - a first after thirteen suborbital tests since 2023 - than in the system's ability to compensate for a failure in real-time.
