SpaceX will try to catch both halves of Starship on Flight 15, as soon as Friday

Until now, every rocket that has reached orbit has left at least part of itself behind, burned up or lost at sea. SpaceX wants its next test to be the first that comes home whole.

Starship Flight 15 is aiming to launch from Starbase, Texas, as soon as Friday 13 November. On this flight, SpaceX will try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage with its launch tower. Two things are still open: the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not yet approved the flight, and SpaceX says the ship will come home only if it is healthy.

If it works, SpaceX says it will be “the first full recovery of an orbital launch system”. In practice, that matters because rockets you can fly again, a bit like aircraft, are the main way launch costs come down.

What SpaceX wants Starship Flight 15 to prove

The plan, from SpaceX’s mission page, comes in two halves. About six and a half minutes after liftoff, the booster should fly back and be caught by the tower’s arms. It will be the first catch attempt for a third-version (V3) Super Heavy. The tower has caught three first-version boosters before, and two of them flew again.

The ship then heads to an orbit about 275 km up. It will release 26 Starlink V3 satellites, and SpaceX says each one adds 1 terabit of network capacity. Three of them carry cameras to photograph Starship’s heatshield, the tiles that protect it during the fiery return. After about 14 orbits and more than 22 hours, the ship should try to land in the tower’s arms.

This builds on Flight 14 on 28 September, the first Starship to reach orbit. Space.com reported that it released 26 Starlink satellites, even after one of the ship’s six engines went out during liftoff.

A licence, a healthy ship and a path over land

The first hurdle is paperwork. SpaceX’s own page says the date is “pending regulatory approval”, and as Teslarati noted, the FAA’s Starship page does not yet list a Flight 15 licence.

The second is the ship itself. It returns from orbital speed, with far more heat and energy than a booster, so the catch is much harder. SpaceX says it will only try if the systems for re-entry, the final engine burn and the tower approach all check out. If not, it can come down safely over the ocean.

The third is the route home. Every earlier Starship upper stage ended its flight over open water; this one heads back toward land. Separately, the FAA is studying SpaceX’s plan for more launches and landings at Starbase, with online public meetings from 17 to 19 November.

How to watch, wherever you are

The free webcast starts about 30 minutes before liftoff on spacex.com and SpaceX’s account on X. The window opens at 22:45 UTC on 13 November: that is 5:45 p.m. in New York, 2:45 a.m. Saturday in Dubai and 4:15 a.m. Saturday in India. Check the morning of launch, because test flight dates often move.

For Starlink users, SpaceX says the new satellites could start serving customers a few weeks after launch. It has not said what that means for speeds in any one country.

Why a careful “maybe” is the right promise

On balance, this is a meaningful step. A fully reusable rocket could make space far cheaper. It also matters beyond SpaceX: Starship is one of the two landers in NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the Moon, and SpaceX is among the eight companies that can bid for NASA’s Moon Base deliveries.

The caution is just as real. Catching a ship that falls from orbit has never been done, and the flight still has no licence. What reassures, in our reading, is that SpaceX has built in a clear way out: a ship that is not healthy goes to the ocean, not the tower.

Watch for two things this week: the FAA’s decision, and whether the date holds. If Friday arrives with both, the answer comes about a day later.