SpaceX to attempt first on-site Starship recovery in 15th flight
SpaceX plans to launch its 15th Starship mission on Friday and will try to catch both the booster and the upper stage at its Texas launch site, a step toward fully reusable operations.
SpaceX is scheduled to launch the 124-metre Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in South Texas at 5:45 p.m. ET on Friday, marking the vehicle's 15th flight since 2023 and the second mission carrying operational Starlink satellites. The launch is intended to generate revenue for the company's satellite network while also testing a new recovery approach.
The company aims to retrieve both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage at the launch site, rather than allowing the spacecraft to splash down in the ocean. The booster is expected to be caught by mechanical arms on the launch tower about 10 minutes after liftoff, a technique previously demonstrated in March 2025. The upper stage, which will complete roughly 14 Earth orbits, is slated to return to the pad around 3:45 p.m. ET on Saturday, approximately 22 hours after launch.
SpaceX has not yet received a launch licence from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which typically issues authorizations a day before Starship flights. The agency did not respond to a request for comment.
Elon Musk has said the company hopes to achieve a weekly launch cadence for Starship by the first half of 2027 and is evaluating a new launch pad in Florida for operations by the end of 2026. NASA has provided about $3.2 billion in funding for Starship development, while SpaceX has invested roughly $15 billion of its own capital.
Both NASA and SpaceX anticipate that Starship will carry astronauts to the moon by 2028, though additional testing—such as in-orbit fuel transfers between tanker versions of the vehicle—remains required. Competing lunar lander projects, including Blue Origin's Blue Moon, are also progressing under NASA's Artemis program.