SpaceX books Friday the 13th for Starship's first ship catch

SpaceX is circling Friday the 13th for Starship Flight 15, the mission where the company finally tries to pluck the ship itself out of the sky with its launch tower. The date came straight from Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX's Vice President of Launch, who announced it on stage at the UP.Summit on Thursday — Ars Technica's Eric Berger was in the room. It's the first launch target to come directly from a SpaceX executive rather than paperwork. Until now the public schedule leaned on FAA air traffic planning slides, which had Flight 15 listed for no earlier than November 8, then November 12. No official mission page or launch time exists yet.

The timing lands inside the window Elon Musk sketched out last month. Speaking at Giga Texas on October 10, Musk said the flight would probably launch a little before Thanksgiving, as Teslarati reported. Ten days later, on SpaceX's third quarter earnings call, he confirmed Flight 15 would attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the ship, and pegged the odds of a clean ship catch as more likely than not. SpaceX even aired an animation of the maneuver during that webcast, showing the ship swinging vertical over Starbase before dropping into the tower's chopsticks.

The hardware is already warmed up. Booster 22 lit all 33 of its Raptor engines for a full duration static fire at Pad 2 on October 25. Ship 42 followed with a single engine burn simulating a deorbit maneuver on October 26, then a 60 second firing of all six engines the next day, according to NASASpaceflight. Ship 42 had also rehearsed the catch back in September, when the Pad 2 arms lifted it into position and crews connected the quick disconnect arm while the vehicle hung from the tower.

The last real hurdle is regulatory. The FAA's Starship page doesn't yet show a Flight 15 license. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in October that after what she described as significant constructive engagement with the FAA, she expects the license to cover a return to the launch site and a tower catch for both stages. Bringing the ship home means a reentry path that heads toward land instead of ending over open ocean like every Starship flight so far.

SpaceX has caught Super Heavy three times, on Flights 5, 7 and 8, but the ship has never been snagged — it comes back from orbital velocity. Flight 14 on September 28 was the first Starship to reach orbit, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites before splashing down, despite an early engine shutdown Musk blamed on engine computer software.

Musk has called a successful ship catch the first time there's been full recovery of an orbital class rocket, and he's already named the step after it: a Flight 16 where both the booster and the ship fly again. NASASpaceflight reports that Ship 43, the next vehicle in line, is set for static fire testing in December.