BOCA CHICA, Texas — SpaceX has put a date on its most ambitious Starship test yet. Speaking at the UP.Summit, SpaceX Vice President of Launch Kiko Dontchev said Flight 15 is targeting liftoff no earlier than Friday, November 13, and the company confirmed the date on X the same day. The mission is built around a first: an attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage back at the launch tower on the same flight.
A First-of-Its-Kind Catch
Every Starbase catch to date has recovered only the booster. Flight 15 would change that. The plan calls for the launch tower's mechanical arms to grab Super Heavy Booster 22 minutes after liftoff, then — later in the flight — to catch Starship 42 as it returns from space. On the company's third-quarter earnings call, Elon Musk framed a successful ship catch as "more likely than not," a notable show of confidence for a maneuver SpaceX has been building toward for two years.
The groundwork is already laid. SpaceX spent recent weeks putting the vehicle through its paces, with Booster 22 completing a full-duration static fire of all 33 Raptor engines and Ship 42 running both a single-engine deorbit simulation and a 60-second, six-engine burn. In September, the Pad 2 arms lifted Ship 42 into catch position and mated the quick-disconnect arm, a dress rehearsal for the real thing.
Why the Double Catch Matters
Catching both stages intact — rather than expending the ship on an ocean splashdown — is the heart of Musk's vision for rapid, airline-style reuse. Each recovery that avoids a water landing shaves refurbishment time and brings the goal of flying the same hardware again within hours closer to reality. It is the same logic that underpins Musk's plans to move enormous computing power to orbit, where cheap, frequent Starship flights are the enabling ingredient.
