SpaceX targets double catch of Starship booster and upper stage

SpaceX plans to catch both the Super Heavy booster and Starship’s upper stage during Flight 15, targeting no earlier than Friday, November 13, 2026, at Orbital Launch Pad 2 in Starbase, Texas. Musk announced the dual-catch plan in an X post dated November 6, 2026.

The company is preparing to launch Flight 15 as soon as Friday pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 5:45 p.m. EST. SpaceX plans to bring both vehicles back for tower recovery at the launch site.

SpaceX has caught three boosters at the launch site, and two of those boosters have since flown again. The Ship upper stage has never been caught. No earlier flight has attempted to catch both the booster and the upper stage at the launch site.

Flight 15 will use Booster 22 and Ship 42, both Block 3 vehicles, lifting off from Orbital Launch Pad 2. The Super Heavy V3 booster will make its initial return and catch attempt. For the booster, the main goals cover launch, ascent, separation, the boostback burn and coming back to the launch site. The booster is planned to return for a catch about 6 minutes and 35 seconds after liftoff following hot staging and separation.

The Ship will insert into a roughly 275 km orbit. From that orbit it will deploy satellites before attempting reentry and catch. The Ship will deploy 26 advanced Starlink V3 satellites and complete about 14 orbits over more than 22 hours, a duration that leads to the planned tower catch at the end of the mission. If systems check out, the Ship will perform a deorbit burn, reentry, flip, and landing burn for a tower catch at approximately T+22 hours 32 minutes.

SpaceX said Starship will attempt a launch site return only if flight controllers find critical systems for reentry maneuvers, final landing burn and tower approach healthy before starting recovery. This health check governs whether the Ship returns to Starbase for catch. Contingency splashdown zones exist in the Gulf of Mexico for the booster and the Pacific for the Ship if a catch is not viable. For the Starship to return to Starbase, it must fly a safe trajectory over inhabited areas in northern Mexico and southern Texas, according to SpaceX.

Every V3 satellite contributes one Terabit of capacity, and the full batch matches about 10 Falcon 9 Starlink V2 Mini flights. Once released from Starship, the V3 satellites will open their antennas, spread solar arrays and make first contact with controllers and the constellation using radio and laser links. Next, the satellites will fire onboard thrusters to lift their orbits.

Three satellites carry special camera suites meant to photograph Starship’s heat shield while in flight. The cameras will send pictures to operators, giving data used to decide if the spacecraft can return to the launch site.

Flight 14 led to changes in the vehicle’s heat protection setup. Workers put extra tile retention features in zones likely to shed tiles during ascent, and they closed routes that once let plasma slip behind the heat shield. Much of the heat shield uses curved tiles. Testing indicates curved tiles cut thermal heating in the tight spaces between tiles during reentry.

If successful, Flight 15 will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact. Recovering everything would allow quick checks, refurbishment and another flight, cutting costs and helping the fast launch pace needed for Starlink growth, moon missions and Mars settlement. Musk described the success odds for this first dual-catch attempt as “more likely than not.”

Musk called the dual-catch “the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary” in a November 6, 2026 X post.

A SpaceX release has described a successful Flight 15 as marking the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and called Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket. The announcement comes after Flight 14, which launched on Sept. 28.