SpaceX will try to catch both Starship stages for the first time on 13 November

Launch set for Friday night

SpaceX plans to launch Starship flight 15 from Starbase, its site near Brownsville, Texas, at 5:45 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, 13 November, which is 23:45 Warsaw time. The launch window lasts 75 minutes, and the countdown can be pushed back by up to that long if weather, technical problems or paperwork cause delays. As of Friday morning the Federal Aviation Administration had not yet issued the launch licence, although the agency has typically granted one a day before earlier Starship launches. SpaceX plans to stream the flight live on its website, starting about 30 minutes before liftoff. The company describes the planned recovery as a first, saying:

“If successful, this will mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and a breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket.”

What the flight would test

The Super Heavy booster is due back at the launch tower about 6 minutes and 35 seconds after liftoff, where the tower's mechanical arms, known as chopsticks, would try to catch it. The ship would then climb to around 275 kilometres, deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites and circle Earth about 14 times over roughly 22.5 hours. It starts on a suborbital path toward the Indian Ocean and fires its engines to reach orbit only after checking its systems. Three satellites would inspect the heat shield, which includes fixes tested on the previous flight. If a problem arises, SpaceX could steer the ship toward the Gulf of Mexico or let it break apart during reentry before it reaches land. If the flight goes to plan, the ship would be caught around 22:17 Warsaw time on Saturday, 14 November.

Track record and doubts

SpaceX has caught the Super Heavy booster three times, on flights 5, 7 and 8 on 13 October 2024, 16 January and 6 March 2025, but it has never caught the upper stage. The previous flight, flight 14 in September, reached orbit for the first time and deployed its satellites, even though some engines shut down mid-flight. That mission was planned for 10 hours and ended after roughly three hours with an intact splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Musk has called flight 15 a 'profound technology milestone', and in October he said:

“Success is not guaranteed on these first flights, but I'd say it's more likely than not that this succeeds.”

Musk added that if the flight does not succeed, SpaceX has a steady stream of further Starship attempts planned through the end of this year.

NASA and the money

NASA is counting on a Starship variant to serve as its lunar lander for the Artemis programme. The Artemis III mission, an uncrewed Starship docking test with the Orion spacecraft carrying four astronauts, has a target launch no earlier than June 2027, and NASA hopes to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028 under Artemis IV. A NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel estimate said SpaceX would need 22 refuelling missions in orbit, while Musk posted on X that the number 'will be more like six to eight'. SpaceX has also said it will stop flying the smaller Falcon 9, which launches the Dragon capsule, currently the only American spacecraft able to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, explained the role Dragon has played:

“Because Dragon has become such a successful and reliable vehicle, it became the de facto way for astronauts to get to orbit.”

A NASA announcement in September added three more station flights with SpaceX, which would keep Dragon flying through 2028 if no further flights are contracted, while the station is set to retire in 2030. In SpaceX's latest financial report, the company recorded about $2.1 billion in revenue from space launches through September 2026, compared with about $12.8 billion from Starlink over the same period.

Space launches (through September 2026)2.1

Starlink (through September 2026)12.8

Space launches (through September 2026)

2.1 USD billion

Starlink (through September 2026)

12.8 USD billion

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