SpaceX plans to make its first attempt to catch the Starship spacecraft at its Texas launch site during its latest flight on Friday, rather than allowing it to splash down in the ocean. The launch is scheduled for 5:45 p.m. EDT from Starbase, Texas.
Starship Flight 15 will attempt to land both the Starship spacecraft and its Super Heavy booster. The mission represents a major milestone in SpaceX’s plans to make the rocket fully reusable, as well as a high-stakes test of a launch vehicle that remains under development.
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Flight 15 is the 15th test flight of Starship, the world’s largest and most powerful rocket. SpaceX has designed the rocket to be fully reusable and has successfully caught or landed its massive Super Heavy first-stage booster several times.
As of Friday morning, SpaceX had not yet received a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The agency, which has typically issued licenses a day before previous Starship launches, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SpaceX considers the next-generation Starship essential to its plans to expand its Starlink satellite network. The company also aims to eventually deploy a constellation of satellites equipped with AI data-processing capabilities, known as Starmind.
Elon Musk has said he expects Starship to reach a weekly launch cadence by the first half of 2027. SpaceX has also said it could begin launching Starship from a new Florida launchpad by the end of 2026.
NASA has helped fund Starship’s development, providing SpaceX with roughly $3.2 billion since selecting the rocket in 2021 to serve as a lunar lander for its astronauts. SpaceX has invested at least $15 billion of its own funds in the rocket’s development.
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NASA and SpaceX are targeting 2028 for a crewed lunar landing. However, significant testing milestones remain, according to analysts and industry engineers. These include demonstrating complex fuel transfers between Starship tanker spacecraft in orbit, a critical capability that would allow the rocket to travel beyond Earth’s orbit and reach the moon.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is also developing a lunar lander, Blue Moon, for NASA under the Artemis program. Blue Moon is expected to join Starship and NASA’s Orion capsule in Earth’s orbit next year for Artemis III, a docking test mission ahead of NASA’s planned lunar landing missions, which are scheduled to begin with Artemis IV.