SpaceX prepares for today the launch of starfalla new reentry vehicle designed to transport cargo through Earth’s orbit and return it to Earth at any point on the planet. Its appearance does not go unnoticed. Due to its low, circular and flattened shape, It is more reminiscent of a ‘flying saucer’ than a conventional space capsule.
The company has developed Starfall with notable secrecy. He has hardly offered any public details about the vehicle, to the point that The launch is being treated with a discretion similar to that of some classified US government missions.. The little that is known comes mainly from a environmental assessment published last month by Federal Aviation Administration of the United States.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the Starfall Demo mission to orbit from Florida https://t.co/cxgrchwMco
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 23, 2026
According to that document, Starfall is intended to support the ‘transportation and delivery of goods through space’. In practice, that means using a rocket to send a cargo capsule across an orbital or suborbital path and then return it to a specific area of the Earth. That scheme would serve both to transport goods from one point to another on the planet and to bring back materials manufactured in space. The first test is planned with a Falcon 9 which will take off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, in Florida.
According to the flight plan, Starfall will circle the planet twice before separate from the upper stage of the Falcon 9, re-enter the atmosphere and land with the help of parachutes in the Pacific Oceanabout 1,300 kilometers west of California. The warnings issued to pilots and navigators already indicate the expected drop zone.
The vehicle has a cylindrical shape, with 3.1 meters in diameter and only 0.75 meters in height. It weighs about 2.1 tons and can carry around one ton of payloadup to a total weight of 3.1 tons. It is not designed to carry crew, but exclusively cargo, and is considerably smaller than the Crew Dragon which SpaceX uses to transport astronauts to the International Space Station.
This first version cannot leave orbit on its own either. It depends on the rocket that launches it to place itself on the proper return trajectory.. Once separated, use compressed nitrogen to properly orient the heat shield during reentrybefore deploying the parachutes and falling into the sea. SpaceX today aims to recover the vehicle, including parachutes and heat shield, to the greatest extent possible.
Starfall may have commercial applications such as return space-made materials to Eartha still small market but with growing interest in sectors such as pharmacist. Companies like Varda Space Industries They are already working on reentry capsules to bring manufactured products into orbit.
But the most obvious client is the Pentagon. The United States has been studying the possibility of using rockets for years deliver military cargo anywhere in the world in less than an hour. SpaceX already collaborates with the Department of Defense in the concept Rocket Cargodesigned to use Starship in large transport. Starfall would be a smaller and possibly more flexible alternative for light loads that do not need a gigantic vehicle.
Other actors, such as Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and Andurilhave also signed agreements related to the global delivery of cargo from space. However, SpaceX could get ahead of itself with Starfall. While Starship remains in the experimental phase, this secret ‘flying saucer’ may become in the first practical step by Elon Musk’s company towards a rapid orbital delivery system.