{"id":4375,"date":"2026-11-13T20:03:59","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T15:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=4375"},"modified":"2026-11-13T20:03:59","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T15:03:59","slug":"spacex-to-attempt-first-starship-spacecraft-recovery-on-land-in-15th-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=4375","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX to attempt first Starship spacecraft recovery on land in 15th flight"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

SpaceX\u2019s latest Starship flight planned for Friday will include its first attempt to \u200bcatch the spacecraft at its Texas launch site rather than discarding it in the ocean, a key test of Elon Musk\u2019s bid to \u200cmake a fully reusable rocket system.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 407-foot-tall (124 m) Starship rocket is scheduled to launch at 4:45 p.m. CT (2245 GMT) from SpaceX\u2019s Starbase launch facilities in South Texas for its 15th flight since 2023 and the second to carry a batch of operational Starlink satellites. That makes the mission both a revenue-generating endeavour for its satellite connectivity business and a high-stakes \u200btest for a rocket still in development.<\/p>\n

SpaceX as of Friday morning had not received a launch licence from the US Federal Aviation Administration. \u200bThe FAA, which has typically issued licenses a day prior to past Starship launches, did not immediately respond to a \u2060request for comment.<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s space and AI colossus views the next-generation Starship rocket as crucial to expanding its Starlink network with more satellites and, in the \u200bfuture, deploying a vast swarm of AI data-processing satellites called Starmind, as the company increasingly positions itself as an infrastructure giant.<\/p>\n

SpaceX last launched Starship in September, \u200btaking the rocket and its satellites to orbit for the first time despite some engines shutting down mid-flight. That mission, planned to last 10 hours, ended after roughly 3 hours with an intact splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

For Friday\u2019s mission, the company expects to return to Texas both Starship\u2019s Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage it launches \u200bto space. The upper stage \u2014 the top half of the rocket that serves as the spacecraft \u2014 will return some 22 hours after launch. SpaceX has \u200bsaid it would be a \u201cbreakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket\u201d if all goes as planned.<\/p>\n

<\/a>MAKING WAY FOR STARSHIP<\/h3>\n

SpaceX has returned the 236-foot-tall Super Heavy \u200cbooster three \u2060times to its launchpad after sending Starship to space, falling back vertically into large mechanical arms fixed to its launch tower some 10 minutes after launch. The last such \u201ctower catch\u201d was in March 2025.<\/p>\n

For the 15th mission, SpaceX will need to move the Super Heavy booster off the launchpad to make way for Starship, which is expected to fall from space after completing 14 orbits around Earth. That sets up the debut Starship catch to occur around 2:45 p.m. \u200bCT (2045 GMT) on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Musk has said \u200bhe expects to enter a weekly \u2060cadence of Starship launches by the first half of 2027, while SpaceX has said it could begin launching Starship from a new Florida launchpad by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n

NASA has helped fund Starship\u2019s development with roughly $3.2 billion delivered \u200bto SpaceX since selecting the rocket in 2021 to serve as a moon lander for its astronauts under the \u200bmultibillion-dollar US Artemis moon \u2060program. SpaceX has put at least $15 billion of its own funds into the rocket\u2019s development.<\/p>\n

NASA and SpaceX expect Starship to land humans on the moon by 2028, though several major testing milestones remain that analysts and industry engineers believe will push that timeline back. Those milestones include demonstrating complex fuel transfers between Starship \u201ctanker\u201d rockets \u2060in orbit, \u200ba key process that will enable Starship to travel beyond Earth\u2019s orbit to the moon.<\/p>\n

Jeff Bezos\u2019 \u200bBlue Origin is also developing a moon lander, Blue Moon, for NASA under the Artemis programme. Blue Moon is poised to join Starship and another spacecraft, NASA\u2019s Orion capsule, in Earth\u2019s orbit \u200bnext year for Artemis III, a docking test mission before NASA\u2019s planned moon landing missions begin with Artemis IV.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SpaceX\u2019s latest Starship flight planned for Friday will include its first attempt to \u200bcatch the spacecraft at its Texas launch site rather than discarding it in the ocean, a key test of Elon Musk\u2019s bid to \u200cmake a fully reusable rocket system. The 407-foot-tall (124 m) Starship rocket is scheduled to launch at 4:45 p.m. CT (2245 GMT) from SpaceX\u2019s Starbase launch facilities in South Texas for its 15th flight since 2023 and the second to carry a batch of operational Starlink satellites. That makes the mission both a revenue-generating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}