SpaceX will attempt to catch both Starship and its booster for the first time
Starship Flight 15 on 11/13 plans to catch both booster and ship
On Flight 15, slated for November 13, SpaceX plans to bring both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage back to the launch site for a tower catch, which would mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system. The ship will deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites, each adding a terabit of capacity, and then orbit Earth roughly 14 times over more than 22 hours before attempting the catch.
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.
- metalman
cut and paste of the mission plan with details of the cargo
November 13, 2026 18:45 - 20:00 AT
Starship Flight 15
Flight 15 of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as Friday, November 13, pending regulatory approval. The 75-minute launch window will open at 4:45 p.m. CT.
A live webcast of the flight will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. Coverage is planned to continue through ship catch, with the potential for hours of live views from Starship as it orbits Earth, powered by Starlink. As is the case with all launches, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to check in here and stay tuned to our X account for updates.
The upcoming flight is planned to be the first to return both Starship and Super Heavy to the launch site for catch. 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.
Starship’s initial return to launch site mission is expected to orbit the Earth at an altitude of ~275 km and complete approximately 14 orbits around the planet over the course of a more than 22-hour flight. Similar to Starship’s first orbital mission, the flight profile has been designed with the opportunity to insert into a passively safe suborbital trajectory or safely deorbit at multiple pre-determined areas over the ocean after raising to an orbital altitude. Read more about the testing, mission design, and safety […]
- tristanj
Launching only 26 Starlink v3 satellites is a disappointingly small number. That's about ~52t or half the block 3 advertised payload capacity of 100t. Elon said on the Q3 earnings call that flight 14 carrying 26 V3 Starlinks was only about half loaded, so apparently the ship can launch twice as many.
I'm curious why they don't fully load it, I can speculate:
0) starship is still in testing, they don't want to change too many variables from flight 14 and add 50t of payload.
1) lower payload gives them more options in engine-out situations. On flight 14, both booster and ship had engines fail.
2) derisking for ship failure, each Starlink sat costs ~$1.2m, and losing $30m of satellites hits less hard than $60m if orbital insertion fails.
3) the dispenser installed on ship 42 only fits 26 sats, and increasing this would require a hardware modification and possible delays.
4) Starlink v3 manufacturing is delayed and they don't have enough units, which I find doubtful given Starship is years late and they should have a backlog of v3s waiting to launch.
5) block 3 has worse performance than expected and can't reliably deliver 100t to orbit. Recent comments that raptor 3 can only reliably deliver 230t of thrust instead of 280t support this. I speculate SpaceX is running raptor 3 >230t on booster ascent, which is why we keep seeing engines failing. This should be resolved by block 4 or 5 with raptor 4.
- omegaSigma95
Does catching ship require any tower arm changes from the booster catches or is it the same hardware setup?
- origini
Is there any more information or research done regarding the poisening of our atmosphere with A LOT more starlink satelites?
As far as i know, it can harm our ozon layer and change of temperature
- formvoltron
Everyone here ought to reconsider if they are truly an engineer for good.
If you are getting pulled into SpaceX noise... you are working for Elon and the share price. All of this tech is on display for one thing. Share price. Elon.
If you were really a wide thinking engineer... you'd realize what is best are datacenters on Earth, using solar/wind + battery.
Not only does it make way more financial sense than datacenters in space... Earth needs clean energy ASAP. That's where humanity's focus (including our top engineering companies) ought to be.
- themgt
The reality is Starship works, SpaceX now has an astonishing lead over all of the competition, and they are cancelling Falcon 9 and arguably pulling up the ladder behind them.
The real criticism of SpaceX is they're now on the verge of quasi-monopolizing access to space. But the haters spent the last decade committed to "Starship doesn't work" so even after it does work, every other rocket is delayed and New Glenn vaporized its pad, they can't kick the supercopium and mount a critique of the company based in reality.
- boredatoms
Is it really so hard to say 13Nov so that its not a bunch of numbers in a strange US-date format