Starship Flight 15: SpaceX Targets Dual Booster and Ship Catch

Starship Flight 15 is shaping up to be the most ambitious test of SpaceX's giant rocket so far. If the plan works on Friday, 13 November 2026, the company will try to catch both stages of the vehicle with the launch tower at Starbase in Texas. The booster would come back to the tower, and so would the upper stage, which has never been attempted before. For anyone following the Starship program, this is the flight to watch this month. You can follow the vehicle's full record on our Starship launch tracker, which we update as new dates and test results arrive.

What Starship Flight 15 is

Starship is SpaceX's fully reusable two-stage rocket. The bottom stage is the Super Heavy booster, and the top stage is called Ship. Flight 15 will fly Booster 22 and Ship 42, both part of the Block 3 generation. According to the flight summary on Wikipedia, this is the fourth Block 3 pair to fly and the second operational flight of that design.

The previous flight, Flight 14, set an important baseline. It reached orbit and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, even though one engine shut down early. That result cleared the way for Flight 15 to attempt much wider recovery goals. Starship has flown only three missions so far this year, so each flight carries a lot of weight for the program's schedule.

Starship Flight 15 is different from earlier flights mainly in its recovery goals. The payload has not been disclosed, so no Starlink deployment is confirmed for this flight. The recovery tests, however, have never been tried at this scale, which is why the mission has drawn so much attention from space fans, engineers and news outlets.

Why the double catch matters

The central goal is to use the tower's two mechanical arms, which SpaceX calls the chopsticks, to catch Booster 22 as it returns from the edge of space. Then the same tower would attempt to catch Ship 42 as well. Catching the booster has already been done on earlier flights. Catching the ship at the tower would be the first attempt of its kind, and catching both on the same day would be a first for the program.

SpaceX's chief executive Elon Musk said on the company's third-quarter earnings call that the ship catch is "more likely than not" to be attempted, as reported by KeepTrack. That is an optimistic public statement from the company's leader, not a guarantee. Engineers still have to show that the ship can survive reentry, guide itself to the tower and be caught safely.

If both stages come back intact, Starship would become the first orbital rocket fully recovered after launch, according to the summary of the plan published by Starlust. Full recovery matters because it removes the cost of building a new rocket for every flight. It also shows that a rocket can be reused in the same way an aircraft can. For more on how Starbase compares with other launch sites, see our guide to rocket launch sites.

The test campaign so far

The vehicles have passed several tests before the flight. Booster 22 completed a full-duration static fire of all 33 Raptor engines at Pad 2 on 25 October. A static fire means the engines are fired while the rocket is held down on the pad, which lets engineers check the systems without launching. KeepTrack reports that Ship 42 fired one engine to simulate the burn it would use to come back toward Earth. The next day, the ship ran all six of its engines for 60 seconds.

Those tests do not prove the flight will succeed, but they show the vehicles are ready for a launch attempt. Starship has suffered several test failures over its history, and the company has often used a flight to learn as much as possible. Flight 15 follows the same pattern. Engineers will collect data on the ascent, the separation of the two stages, the reentry and the landing process, even if one of the catches does not work.

Readers who want the technical background can read the flight page on SpaceX launches on SpaceTracker.live, which lists the earlier flights and their results side by side.

The date, and the FAA question

The Starship Flight 15 date has moved several times. Planning slides from the US Federal Aviation Administration first listed no earlier than 8 November, then 12 November. SpaceX vice president of launch Kiko Dontchev named 13 November as the target at the UP.Summit event, as reported by Ars Technica and summarised by KeepTrack. This is the first date that came from a SpaceX executive rather than from FAA slides.

NASASpaceFlight's headline on the flight says it still awaits an FAA green light. That means the government licence process is one of the things that could still change the schedule. A licence delay, a technical issue on the pad or weather could each move the launch by hours or days. Starship dates have slipped before, so treat 13 November as a target rather than a certainty.

For a quick view of other launches this week, check our rocket launch schedule and the next rocket launch page. Both update as dates change.

How and when to watch

OrbitalRadar lists a launch window opening around 22:45 UTC on 13 November, with a webcast that usually begins about 20 minutes before the planned time. For readers in India, that means the window opens at about 04:15 IST on 14 November. Central Time in Texas is six hours behind UTC, so the window is around 4:45 pm on 13 November local time at Starbase. SpaceX has not posted an official launch time at the moment, so watch for the company's own announcement before you plan your evening.

SpaceX usually streams Starship flights live on its website and social channels. Our SpaceX launch tracker will show the same schedule and the final time once it is published.

What comes after Flight 15

Flight 16 is already in preparation. Its vehicles have finished cryogenic testing at Starbase, and static fire tests are expected soon. Flight 16 is also the first Starship flight planned from Cape Canaveral in Florida, once the vehicles are shipped there. SpaceX is building two pads at Launch Complex 37 to support Florida flights, according to the same Starlust coverage.

Company leaders have also set ambitious targets for next year. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, said a Starship upper stage will fly again by early 2027, and that an on-orbit refuelling mission is planned for 2027. Musk said Starship will fly weekly in the first half of 2027. Starlust's analysis is more cautious. It notes that Starship is years behind on refuelling and on upper-stage catches, so these targets should be read as goals, not promises.

For the bigger picture of the program, our latest astronomy news section will publish follow-up reports after the flight, including the results of each catch attempt.

What to watch for on the day

• Whether the booster returns to the tower and is caught by the chopsticks.
• Whether the ship survives reentry and attempts the tower catch.
• Any update to the launch time, the FAA licence or the webcast schedule.
• The next flight date for Flight 16 from Florida.

Sources and further reading

This article draws on the Wikipedia flight summary, Starlust's report on the one-day slip, KeepTrack's SpaceX brief, OrbitalRadar's launch page and NASASpaceFlight's coverage of the FAA status. Dates and times may change, so check the official SpaceX channels before you plan to watch.