SpaceX to attempt first land-based Starship recovery on 15th flight
SpaceX plans to launch its 15th Starship mission from Texas and try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage on land, marking a key step toward full reusability.
SpaceX is set to launch the 15th Starship flight from its Starbase facility in South Texas at 4:45 p.m. CT (2245 GMT) on Friday. The mission will carry a batch of operational Starlink satellites, providing revenue for the company's broadband network while testing a new recovery approach.
The company aims to return both the 236-foot Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage to the launch site. The booster is expected to land on the launchpad about 10 minutes after liftoff, while the upper stage should descend roughly 22 hours later, with a planned “tower catch” around 2:45 p.m. CT (2045 GMT) on Saturday.
SpaceX has previously recovered the Super Heavy booster three times by guiding it into mechanical arms on the launch tower, the most recent such catch occurring in March 2025. This will be the first attempt to capture the Starship upper stage on land rather than allowing it to splash down in the ocean.
Elon Musk has said the company hopes to achieve a weekly launch cadence for Starship by the first half of 2027 and is targeting a new launch pad in Florida by the end of 2026. NASA has contributed about $3.2 billion to Starship’s development, and SpaceX has invested at least $15 billion of its own capital.
NASA and SpaceX anticipate that Starship will carry astronauts to the moon by 2028, though additional milestones such as in-orbit fuel transfers remain to be demonstrated. Competing lunar lander projects, including Blue Origin’s Blue Moon, are also slated for upcoming Artemis missions.