SpaceX will attempt to "catch" Starship on land for the first time after a spaceflight
Kyiv • UNN
The fifteenth Starship flight is scheduled in Texas, carrying Starlink satellites into orbit. SpaceX will attempt to recover both stages of the rocket.
The Starship rocket flight by SpaceX scheduled for Friday will include the first attempt to "catch" the spacecraft at the launch site in Texas, rather than allowing it to fall into the ocean. This will be a key test as part of Elon Musk’s effort to create a fully reusable rocket system, reports UNN, citing Reuters.
Details
The launch of the 124-meter (407-foot) Starship rocket is scheduled for 4:45 p.m. Central Time (10:45 p.m. GMT) from SpaceX’s Starbase spaceport in South Texas. It will be the system’s 15th flight since 2023 and the second during which a batch of operational Starlink satellites will be placed into orbit. Thus, the mission is both a commercial undertaking to develop the satellite communications network and a crucial test for a rocket that is still at the development stage.
As of Friday morning, SpaceX had still not received a launch license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The agency, which typically issued licenses a day before previous Starship launches, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk’s company, which operates in the fields of space exploration and artificial intelligence, views the next-generation Starship rocket as a critically important element for expanding the Starlink network. In the future, it could also be used to deploy a large constellation of satellites for processing data using artificial intelligence—a project called Starmind. This is consistent with SpaceX’s positioning as an infrastructure giant.
The previous Starship launch took place in September, when the rocket succeeded in placing satellites into orbit for the first time, despite several engines shutting down during the flight. That mission, designed to last 10 hours, ended approximately three hours later with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
During the mission scheduled for Friday, the company plans to return both the rocket’s first stage—the Super Heavy booster—and the upper stage (the spacecraft itself) to Texas. The upper stage is expected to return approximately 22 hours after launch. SpaceX said that if all stages are completed successfully, it would be a "breakthrough moment on the path to turning Starship into a reliable rocket that can be rapidly reused".
Additionally
The media outlet notes that SpaceX has already returned the 72-meter (236-foot) Super Heavy booster to the launch site three times after launching the Starship spacecraft into space. Approximately 10 minutes after launch, the launch vehicle made a vertical landing directly into large mechanical "arms" attached to the launch tower. The last time this happened was in March 2025.
For the 15th mission, SpaceX must remove the Super Heavy booster from the launch site to clear space for Starship. The spacecraft is expected to return from space after completing 14 orbits around Earth. This creates the conditions for the first-ever "catch" of the Starship spacecraft itself, which is scheduled to take place on Saturday at approximately 2:45 p.m. Central Time (8:45 p.m. GMT).
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Elon Musk said he expects to reach a schedule of weekly Starship launches by the first half of 2027. At the same time, SpaceX said that by the end of 2026, the company could begin launching Starship from a new launch site in Florida.
NASA funded the development of Starship, allocating approximately $3.2 billion to SpaceX. This came after the agency selected the rocket in 2021 as the lander for delivering astronauts to the Moon as part of the multibillion-dollar U.S. Artemis program. For its part, SpaceX has invested at least $15 billion of its own funds in developing the rocket.
NASA and SpaceX plan for Starship to deliver people to the Moon by 2028. However, several important testing milestones still lie ahead; in the view of industry analysts and engineers, this could lead to the stated deadlines being postponed. These milestones include working through the complex procedure of transferring propellant in orbit between Starship vehicles (in particular, between the “tanker” and the main spacecraft). This process is essential for Starship to travel beyond low Earth orbit—to the Moon.
Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is also developing a lunar lander for NASA—the Blue Moon—as part of the Artemis program. Next year, Blue Moon is expected to rendezvous with Starship and another spacecraft—the NASA Orion capsule—in low Earth orbit. This will take place during the Artemis III mission, which involves testing docking before NASA’s direct crewed flights to the Moon begin as part of the Artemis IV mission.