Starbase bustles with activity as SpaceX prepares for next two Starship flights
SpaceX has been really busy preparing for the upcoming flights of its flagship rocket, Starship. Cameras pointed at the company's Starbase facilities in Texas revealed plenty of activity over the last couple of days. This included a full-duration static fire test of Booster 22 (Flight 15 first stage) and moving Ship 42 (Flight 15 upper stage) to the Massey Outpost for its own static fire test. In the meantime, Flight 16's Ship 43 was also moved to Pad 2 and lifted up via the launch tower's chopstick arms for what appeared to be a rehearsal for future catch landings.
Preparations for Flight 15
In preparation for what will be the fourth flight of Starship V3, the 171-foot Ship 42 was steadily rolled out to Massey's on Monday, where it underwent a single-engine static fire test at 9:17 pm CDT. Elsewhere at Pad 2, the Super Heavy booster ignited all of its 33 Raptor engines for a static fire test of its own at 8:22 am CDT on Sunday. The first stage was also lifted off the ground by the launch tower late that night for what appeared to be a catch rehearsal.
Starship Flight 15: Ship 42 conducts a single-engine static fire test at SpaceX Massey's. https://t.co/k6ExB7hQyy https://t.co/hGqsLQL5WP
— NSF - NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) October 27, 2026
CEO Elon Musk announced earlier this month that both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage would be caught at the end of Flight 15. Last month, SpaceX had the chopstick arms at the launch tower lift up Ship 42 off the ground as well, which indicated that the company was actually preparing for its first-ever Starship upper stage catch.
It was a busy night last night. B22 was lifted from the pad, S42 left Megabay-2, S43 returned to the bay, following cryo testing. S42 then departed for the Massey outpost, for static fire testing, along with a barrel section and B22 returned. @SpaceX logistics at its best. https://t.co/j1gE923DRO
— Avid Space (@LabPadre) October 26, 2026
Preparations for Flight 16
SpaceX capped off a busy couple of days at Starbase by lifting Ship 43—the upper stage to be used for Flight 16—off the ground on Monday in yet another apparent catch simulation test. While SpaceX is yet to confirm this, Flight 16 is reportedly set to be the first Starship to fly from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A few miles away, the company is also building two more launchpads at Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
We’ve received approval to develop Space Launch Complex-37 for Starship operations at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Construction has started. With three launch pads in Florida, Starship will be ready to support America’s national security and Artemis goals as the world’s premiere spaceport continues to evolve to enable airport-like operations. We’d like to thank the Department of the Air Force (@usairforce), 45th Space Force (@SLDelta45), and U.S. Fish and Wildlife (@USFWS) for their effort on the environmental review
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 1, 2025
Future of Starship
SpaceX hopes to enable frequent, yet reasonably cheap, travel to low Earth orbit and beyond with Starship, which has been designed as a fully reusable vehicle. Flight 14 was far from perfect but saw the rocket reach orbit for the first time, and SpaceX is looking to build on the learnings from the mission. "Flight 14 was a major technical milestone, and we remain on track with our goals to bring back both the first and second stages to the tower this year, refly the second stage by early next year, and ramp our launch cadence as we make progress toward rapid reusability," the company's COO Gwynne Shotwell said recently. Indeed, 2027 is going to be a big year for the aerospace company, especially with Starship set to participate in the highly complicated Artemis III mission involving four astronauts.
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