Starship Flight 15: Elon Musk says SpaceX will try to catch both rocket stages next month
SpaceX is planning to catch both stages of the Starship rocket on the launch tower on its next integrated test flight. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared the plan at the Q3 2026 Financial and Operational Results live event, adding that "if we succeed, this will be the first time an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered." The next launch, targeted for November, will build on Flight 14, which was the first multi-orbit mission for Starship.
“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,” SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said. She also shared that an on-orbit refueling of Starship is scheduled for next year, along with the launch of mobile V2 and Starmind satellites in 2027. “We have had significant constructive engagement with the FAA and expect the license for Flight 15 to include a return to the launch site and tower catch for both stages,” Shotwell said.
SpaceX is currently flying Version 3, or V3, of Starship—which is slightly taller than previous iterations. It stands 408 feet (124.4 meters) tall with a diameter of 30 feet (9 meters) and will be the first to have both its stages recovered. Catching the first and second stages is something SpaceX has never done before. It has made four attempts to catch the Super Heavy booster (237 feet/72.3 meters tall) and succeeded three times—one attempt was aborted due to a tower issue. SpaceX plans to rapidly increase the launch cadence from Flight 15 onwards. Company CEO Elon Musk said at the event that Starship is expected to fly weekly in the first half of 2027. “[In the] second half of next year, we expect to launch twice weekly or maybe even more frequently than that by the next year. Most people don’t realize how important this is, but it will be obvious in hindsight,” Musk said.
SpaceX is also working on building Starbase Louisiana, a new spaceport which will enable up to 30 Starship flights per day. Musk is investing $100 billion in this new launch site, which he says will have 20 or more launch towers that will send millions of tons to orbit each year. “Our internal aspiration for the first launch from Louisiana is in two years. '28 is our goal, but I think '29 is highly likely. I think we will be launching from Louisiana at scale in 2029,” Musk shared. The billionaire also revealed that Starship will launch more Starlink satellites to space, similar to Flight 14, which added 26 Tbps of capacity to the constellation. Musk said that within three years, the bandwidth will increase by about 100 times over that of the current Starlink constellation.
On-orbit refueling will be another enormous milestone that Starship needs to accomplish. The rocket uses most of its fuel to reach low Earth orbit, so its tanks must be refueled for missions to the Moon and Mars, especially when they involve large amounts of cargo. In 2028, Starship is slated to take astronauts to the lunar surface during NASA’s Artemis IV mission, which makes on-orbit refueling essential.
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