Starship Flight 15 Targets Nov. 13 Double Catch Attempt

By John Maximus · Published 6 November 2026
Reported from named sources and checked against the publishers linked in this article. Corrections: editorial and corrections policy.

SpaceX is targeting Friday, November 13 for Starship Flight 15, the test flight on which the satellite internet operator says it will try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage with the launch tower at Starbase, Texas. The date came from Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, who gave it on stage at the UP.Summit event, according to space journalist Eric Berger, whose post was reported by Tesla North on November 5.

Key facts

• Tesla North stresses that November 13 is “a target rather than a guaranteed launch day,” and that the launch time was not given in Berger’s report.
• A CADENA air-traffic coordination presentation lists the flight no earlier than November 13, a one-day slip from the November 12 date on an earlier “high profile missions” slide shared by the SpaceNotices account on October 29, according to starlust and ShiftDelete.Net.
• Elon Musk confirmed the double-catch plan on SpaceX’s third-quarter earnings webcast on October 20, per ShiftDelete.Net.
• Both vehicles have passed their static fires — engine burns run with the rocket clamped to the pad instead of flying. starlust describes Booster 22’s October 25 test as a full-duration, 33-engine burn, and ShiftDelete.Net reports SpaceX said on October 28 that Ship 42 performed “a full duration, six-engine static fire” plus a single Raptor burn simulating a deorbit burn.
• Flight 14 was the first Starship flight to reach Earth orbit and deployed the first Starlink V3 satellites, ShiftDelete.Net reports.

Why it matters

Musk told the October 20 call that a success “will be the first time that an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered,” and put the odds of pulling it off first time at “more likely than not,” according to Space.com. A full catch would close the reuse loop SpaceX describes as key to cheap satellite internet launches, NASA’s Artemis Moon landings and eventually Mars missions.

For broadband customers, the link runs through payload. The V3 satellite class cannot physically be carried by Falcon 9 in meaningful quantities, Techtimes says, so Starship is the only route to the next tier of network capacity — on a constellation where Starlink already accounts for 66% of active satellites.

What a double catch would mean for Starlink service

The payoff is throughput per launch. When SpaceX eventually flies a full batch of about 60 V3 satellites on one Starship, Techtimes reports, that single launch would add roughly 60 Tbps of downlink capacity, about 23 times the per-launch contribution of a Falcon 9 V2 Mini mission. A reusable ship is what makes repeating that launch cheap and often rather than rare.

Two things subscribers can already see sit alongside that capacity picture. On availability, Starlink keeps opening markets on Falcon 9-launched hardware — including the enterprise Starlink service in Lesotho launched last week by regional operator Paratus, aimed at business and government customers rather than households. On price, SpaceX has moved to dynamic pricing of up to $156 a month in the US, setting the residential monthly fee by how busy a given service area is, with the top rates falling on the most congested cells. None of the outlets cited here forecasts a price cut or a specific coverage expansion from Flight 15.

What Starlink V3 adds

Techtimes sets out the V3 specifications against the V2 Mini satellites Falcon 9 launches today:

• Mass: roughly 2,000 kilograms (about 4,400 lbs) each, more than three times a V2 Mini.
• Power: solar arrays built from four stitched 19-metre (about 62-foot) blanket segments, generating roughly twice the power of V2 panels.
• Downlink: about 1 terabit per second per satellite, against roughly 100 gigabits per second for a V2 Mini.
• Uplink: about 160 Gbps.
• Beams: 2,048 steerable downlink and 2,048 uplink beams, against 192 and 144 on V2 — more beams means traffic can be split across more small patches of ground instead of shared across one big one.
• Laser links: six optical inter-satellite links at 400 Gbps each, which is how the network serves areas with no ground station nearby.

What is not confirmed

Tesla North notes that Berger’s report does not say Dontchev confirmed a ship catch, and that SpaceX had not posted an official Flight 15 mission page or an X update confirming that profile. The outlet also points out that catching Super Heavy and bringing the upper stage back to the tower are separate milestones. ShiftDelete.Net, writing on October 30, said SpaceX itself had not announced a launch date.

The rehearsal behind the ship catch

Techtimes reported that during the run-up to Flight 14 in September, SpaceX lifted Ship 42 into the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms — the pair of steel arms that close around a descending rocket to hold it — and tested the pins and the arms’ side-to-side movement. Engineers also practised reconnecting the umbilical line that must reattach to a caught ship to drain leftover cryogenic propellant; Techtimes said NASASpaceflight has documented that drain as a safety prerequisite, because until it is done the vehicle is a pressurised hazard that cannot be safely moved or inspected.

Cadence plans, and the caveats

Musk has said Starship will fly weekly in the first half of 2027, then twice weekly or more by the end of that year, per ShiftDelete.Net, while Shotwell said a Starship upper stage will refly by early 2027 with an on-orbit refuelling mission also scheduled for next year, according to starlust.

starlust cautions that such timelines should be taken with a pinch of salt: the programme is several years behind on milestones including orbital refuelling and catching the upper stage, and has flown just three Starship missions this year. The outlet also reports that SpaceX has sought approval for 456 annual launches and up to 912 landings at Starbase, against a current approval for 25 launches, and is investing $100 billion in a new Starbase in Louisiana, with its first flight there in 2028 or 2029.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Flight 15 still need regulatory approval?

Yes. ShiftDelete.Net reported that the flight still needs an FAA licence, and that SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told the company’s third-quarter call SpaceX expects the Flight 15 licence “to include return to launch site and tower catch for both stages.”

Why is catching the ship harder than catching the booster?

According to ShiftDelete.Net, the booster climbs only a few minutes before heading back, while the ship has to reach orbit, slow down, survive reentry through the dense atmosphere, flip from its belly-flop position to vertical and then line up precisely with the tower arms. The outlet added that bringing it back to Starbase means reentering toward land rather than the open ocean, which is why FAA approval matters.

How many times has SpaceX caught a Super Heavy booster?

ShiftDelete.Net reported that SpaceX has caught Super Heavy boosters with the tower’s “chopstick” arms on three flights. It has never tried to catch the Starship upper stage.

Where will Flight 16 launch from?

NASASpaceflight reports Flight 16 is expected to be Starship’s first launch from Florida, and starlust says its vehicles have completed cryo testing at Starbase ahead of static fires. SpaceX is developing two pads at Launch Complex 37 and, per the FAA, may be authorised for up to 76 Starship launches and 152 landings a year there.