SpaceX is preparing to attempt something no rocket has done before. On Friday 13 November, the company plans to launch Starship on its 15th test flight and catch both stages of the vehicle with the launch tower's mechanical arms: the Super Heavy booster minutes after liftoff, and the Starship upper stage after almost a full day in orbit.

The flight is targeted for a 75-minute window opening at 4:45 p.m. Central time, 5:45 p.m. Eastern, from Orbital Launch Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas. It remains subject to regulatory approval, and SpaceX has warned the date is likely to move if the Federal Aviation Administration has not issued the licence modification the flight needs.

Two catches, 22 hours apart

About six and a half minutes after liftoff, the Super Heavy booster should return to the launch tower and be caught by its chopstick arms. SpaceX has made that catch before with earlier versions of the booster, but this will be the first attempt with the new V3 booster, Booster 22. The upper stage, Ship 42, will continue to orbit at roughly 275 kilometres up, deploy 26 of SpaceX's next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, and circle Earth about 14 times over more than 22 hours.

The second catch is the harder part. Ship has flown to orbit only once before, on Flight 14 in September, and its test flights so far have ended with a practice landing at sea, where the vehicle flips upright, fires its engines and sets down on the water. This time, after the long orbital coast, Ship must run that same landing manoeuvre over Starbase and settle into the tower's arms. SpaceX says Ship will head for the tower only if flight controllers confirm that every system it needs for the catch is healthy. If not, the company can bring it down at preplanned spots in the Pacific, with splashdown options near Hawaii or off the coast of Chile.

Elon Musk has put the odds of a successful ship catch on the first attempt at 50 to 60 percent. If both catches work, Starship would become the first orbital rocket ever recovered in full, a milestone the company needs to make the system rapidly reusable.

Why this flight matters

Flight 15 is only Starship's second trip to orbit, after Flight 14's success in September. It is the fourth flight of the Block 3 hardware, the larger and more capable version of the vehicle that SpaceX plans to use for operational missions, including carrying Starlink satellites and, eventually, crew and cargo to the Moon and Mars under NASA's Artemis programme.

The flight plan was published by SpaceX on 7 November, after vice president of launch Kiko Dontchev first shared the 13 November target at the UP.Summit on 5 November. Booster 22 has been rolled to Pad 2 and lowered onto the launch mount, with Ship 42 still to be stacked on top. Airspace notices covering 13 to 19 November give SpaceX room to slip a few days if approval, weather or hardware issues push the date back.

Astronomy magazine's launch preview notes that the booster catch is the first of any kind at Pad 2, and that the ship catch attempt is gated on health conditions the FAA has approved in advance. The flight will also be a test of the V3 booster's engine relight systems after problems on earlier flights.

Friday is a busy day for launches. United Launch Alliance is also targeting 13 November for its Vulcan rocket to carry 40 satellites for Amazon Leo, the broadband constellation formerly known as Project Kuiper, after a nine-month grounding. SpaceX will stream the Starship flight on its website and its X account, starting about 30 minutes before liftoff.