v1Big updateSeptember 18, 2026
Liftoff Watch v1
Liftoff Watch v1 is a daily desk: follow providers, vehicles, and pads; see the month as a calendar; read a rebuilt homepage and launch page; and track Starship’s next flight as Starship Group 31-1, Flight 14 — still without an account.
New and improved
- Starship next flight shows Starship Group 31-1 with Flight 14 underneath, instead of one catalog line that still said Starlink.
- Starship Mission Control tracks the official Flight 14 window, orbit profile, and 26 Starlink V3 payload from SpaceX’s mission page.
- Follow a provider, vehicle, or pad and get the same browser reminders you already use for a single launch.
- Open the month as a calendar to see clustered windows and quiet days at a glance.
- Ask whether you can see a launch from a saved place — distance, direction, and a plain likely / maybe / no call.
- Scan What's moving for windows that firmed, slipped, or scrubbed in the last two weeks.
- Pin missions, providers, vehicles, or pads to a private watch board that lives in your browser.
- The homepage now leads with the rocket when a launch has no published payload name, so the largest words on the page say something real instead of "Unknown Payload".
- Read the countdown and launch-window confidence in a compact launch-page hero, then the mission, flight plan, site, hardware, and schedule in one rhythm.
- Flight reports open on the flight photo and score the ship and the booster separately.
- Opening a launch plays a liftoff; other page changes rise into place. Cmd/Ctrl-click and middle-click still open in a new tab.
- Open the next dated Starship-class launch from the catalog, with status, NET, and countdown. If none is listed, the page says so instead of inventing a window.
- Countdown digits roll over as they tick, and the clock pulses in the site accent through the final minute before a window opens.
Fixes
- Starship status no longer says Flight 14 is an unpublished mid-September range NET, or that Booster 21 has not static-fired.
- The in-flight and launch-soon corner card no longer fades out on the left — it sits on a solid dark panel.
- Starship readiness and confirmation-gate shading no longer stretches into the neighboring column.
- Ship 40 recovery on Starship Mission Control now sits directly under Next Flight.
- Notify, pin, and follow on a launch page are compact icon buttons with the same names for assistive tech.
- The homepage confidence hint is a full 44-pixel tap target, including on phones.
- The homepage masthead no longer prints the launch window twice, and status sits beside the countdown it describes.
- A missing agency, launch, vehicle, rocket, or catalog page now shows the same not-found heading and is kept out of search results.
- The header menu, Search, and Close controls are now at least 44 pixels across.
- Footer legal type is brighter so it stays readable on the dark background.
- The grey bar that used to run down the screen while a new page loaded is gone.
- Local-only pages on the live site use the same not-found title as other missing URLs.
- Schedule and calendar pages no longer ship unused mission briefings with every card.
- Search with an empty field opens from cache, and Starship photos below the first screen load as you reach them.
- Launch photos on a mission page now load as a resized image instead of the full original file.