The upcoming Starship flight by SpaceX, scheduled for Friday, will mark the company’s first effort to capture the spacecraft at its launch site in Texas, instead of allowing it to fall into the ocean—a significant test in Elon Musk’s aim to create a fully reusable rocket system.
The 124-meter-tall Starship rocket is set to lift off at 5:45 p.m. ET from SpaceX’s Starbase facilities in South Texas. This will be its 15th flight since 2023 and the second mission to deploy a set of operational Starlink satellites. This mission not only aims to generate revenue for the satellite connectivity division but also serves as a critical examination of a rocket that remains under development.
As of Friday morning, SpaceX had yet to obtain a launch license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Typically, the FAA issues licenses a day before previous Starship launches, but there was no immediate response to a request for comment.
Musk’s company, which is also heavily invested in AI, considers the next-generation Starship rocket essential for enhancing its Starlink network with additional satellites and, in the future, for deploying a large array of AI data-processing satellites known as Starmind, as SpaceX increasingly establishes itself as a major infrastructure player.
In September, SpaceX successfully launched Starship, marking the rocket’s first journey into orbit along with its satellites, despite experiencing some engine shutdowns during the flight. This mission, which was expected to last 10 hours, concluded after approximately three hours with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
SpaceX amazed engineers, scientists, and space fans by successfully returning its heaviest rocket booster back to its launch area intact. The reusability aspect of the Starship rocket is anticipated to significantly lower mission costs.
For the mission on Friday, SpaceX aims to recover both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage after launch. The upper stage, which functions as the spacecraft’s top half, is expected to return roughly 22 hours post-launch. The company has stated that achieving this would represent a “breakthrough moment in establishing Starship as a dependable, rapidly reusable rocket,” provided everything goes according to plan.
Preparing for Starship
SpaceX has successfully returned the 71-meter-tall Super Heavy booster to its launchpad three times after deploying Starship into space, with the booster descending vertically into large mechanical arms fixed to its launch tower approximately 10 minutes after liftoff. The most recent “tower catch” occurred in March 2025.
For this 15th mission, the Super Heavy booster will need to be moved off the launchpad to accommodate Starship, which is anticipated to descend from space after completing 14 orbits around Earth. This sets up the inaugural Starship catch to take place around 3:45 p.m. ET on Saturday.
-
Starlink satellites create light pollution and disrupt radio frequencies. And it’s getting worse
-
SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites. Here’s how that could impact the atmosphere and the night sky
Musk has stated that he anticipates a weekly launch schedule for Starship by the first half of 2027, while SpaceX has indicated that it may start launching Starship from a new Florida launchpad by late 2026.
NASA has provided approximately $3.2 billion to support the development of Starship since selecting it in 2021 as a moon lander for its astronauts under the Artemis moon program. SpaceX has invested at least $15 billion of its own finances into the rocket’s development.
Footage taken in Turks and Caicos captures debris blazing across the sky after the new Starship rocket disintegrated during a test flight.
Both NASA and SpaceX expect the Starship to facilitate human landings on the moon by 2028, although various critical testing milestones lie ahead that analysts and industry experts believe could delay that timeline.
These milestones encompass the demonstration of intricate fuel transfers between Starship “tanker” rockets in orbit—an essential operation that will enable Starship to venture beyond Earth’s orbit to the moon.
Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is also working on a moon lander, named Blue Moon, for NASA under the Artemis initiative. Blue Moon is set to join Starship and NASA’s Orion capsule in Earth’s orbit next year for Artemis III, which will serve as a docking test mission ahead of NASA’s intended moon landing missions starting with Artemis IV.