SpaceX Targets November 13 for First Attempt to Catch Both Starship Stages

SpaceX has scheduled Starship Flight 15 for November 13, with a 75-minute launch window opening at 5:45 PM Eastern time — and, for the first time, an attempt to recover both stages of the super heavy-lift vehicle, the Super Heavy booster and the Ship upper stage.

The mission remains pending regulatory approval, and weather must cooperate. If both conditions hold, the flight will mark the first time SpaceX tries to retrieve the complete orbital launch system in a single mission. For satellite operators and telecom watchers, the flight carries a second payload of significance: Ship will deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites, a primary mission objective that ties the test directly to SpaceX's broadband constellation plans.

What has SpaceX recovered before?

The record so far is one-sided. SpaceX has caught the Super Heavy booster three times, using the "chopstick arms" of its launch tower to grab the stage a few minutes after liftoff. It has never attempted to catch Ship. The reason is physics: Ship travels much higher and much faster than the booster, which makes a mid-air tower catch considerably harder to execute.

What will Flight 15 actually do?

The flight profile is far more ambitious than anything Starship has flown. Starship reached its first orbital flight on the vehicle's 14th test mission, but SpaceX cut that trip short. Ship spent roughly two hours in orbit instead of the ten hours planned.

Flight 15 aims well beyond that. The plan:

• Ship will orbit the planet roughly 14 times
• Total flight duration is expected to exceed 22 hours before deorbit
• Ship will deploy 26 Starlink V3 satellites during the mission
• Super Heavy will be caught by the tower's chopstick arms minutes after launch
• A day later, the same arms will attempt to catch Ship on return

One caveat matters. SpaceX will attempt the Ship catch only if the vehicle can deorbit over one of several pre-determined areas and if conditions are optimal. The company itself acknowledges the catch may not happen on this flight. The event, including any Ship catch, will stream live on SpaceX's account on X.

How will the catch work?

Elon Musk demonstrated the procedure in a short video on the company's latest earnings call. The sequence repeats the proven booster approach: the launch tower's chopstick arms catch Super Heavy shortly after launch, then catch Ship roughly a day later as the upper stage returns. Both stages would return to the same tower infrastructure, an arrangement SpaceX has operated for booster recovery since its first successful catch.

What does this change for launch economics and satellite delivery?

Success would move Starship a major step toward full reusability, the design goal SpaceX has held for the vehicle from the start. A fully reusable super heavy-lift launcher would change the cost equation for large satellite constellations, since both stages return to the pad rather than burn up or splash down. For the Starlink program specifically, Ship's payload capacity makes the V3 satellite deployment the first visible proof of Starship's role as the constellation's workhorse launcher.

The company's announcement came via a November 7 post on X, naming Friday, November 13 as the earliest launch date pending regulatory sign-off. If regulators approve and the Ship catch succeeds, the next flights will show whether the dual-recovery profile can become routine; if conditions force SpaceX to skip the catch, the company has left the door open to try again on a subsequent flight.