The story
- Status
- Confirmed
- As of
TL;DR: SpaceX has posted an official mission page for Starship Flight 15. It is targeting launch as early as Friday, November 13, 2026, pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 4:45 p.m. CT (5:45 p.m. ET). SpaceX says it is planned to be the first flight to return both Super Heavy and Starship to the launch site for a catch.
What SpaceX confirmed
On November 7, @SpaceX posted "Starship is preparing for catch" and said Flight 15 is targeting launch as early as Friday, November 13, pending regulatory approval. The linked Flight 15 mission page adds the details:
- Window: 75 minutes, opening at 4:45 p.m. CT on November 13. The webcast starts about 30 minutes before liftoff on spacex.com and @SpaceX.
- Double catch: SpaceX says the flight is planned to be the first to return both Starship and Super Heavy to the launch site for catch. If it works, SpaceX calls it the first full recovery of an orbital launch system.
- Booster: This is the first return and catch attempt for a Super Heavy V3 booster. SpaceX notes that three V1 boosters were caught on earlier flight tests, and two of them reflew.
- Ship: Starship's primary objectives are deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites and the first return to launch site and catch at Starbase.
- Flight profile: An orbit of about 275 km and roughly 14 orbits over a flight of more than 22 hours.
SpaceX also says Starship will only attempt the return to the launch site if the flight control team confirms that the systems needed for reentry, the landing burn and the tower approach are healthy. The webcast is planned to continue through the ship catch, with the potential for hours of live views from orbit over Starlink.
Key times from SpaceX's timeline
SpaceX lists these as approximate:
| Time after liftoff | Event | |---|---| | 0:02:21 | Hot-staging | | 0:06:35 | Super Heavy landing burn shutdown and catch | | 0:26:10 | Starship orbital insertion burn | | 0:35:01 to 1:17:40 | Starlink V3 deployment | | 21:35:57 | Deorbit burn | | 22:32:34 | Starship landing burn shutdown and catch |
If the flight launches at the opening of the window, the ship catch would come around 3:15 p.m. CT on Saturday, November 14.
The Starlink payload and heatshield
Each Starlink V3 satellite adds 1 terabit of capacity, according to SpaceX, and the 26 on this flight equal about 10 Starlink V2 Mini launches on Falcon 9. Three of them carry cameras to scan Starship's heatshield and send imagery to operators, one of several data sources SpaceX says will inform the decision to return the ship.
The heatshield carries over the Flight 14 fixes, including extra retention on tiles in the highest-risk areas and changes to stop plasma getting behind tiles. A large portion also uses a curved tile design that SpaceX says reduces heating in the gaps between tiles.
What changed since our last update
Pad Zero's November 5 dispatch reported the November 13 target from a SpaceX executive's remarks at the UP.Summit. Today the date, the window and the double catch plan are on SpaceX's own channels, so they move from reported to confirmed. The date is still pending regulatory approval, and SpaceX says the schedule is dynamic and likely to change.
Sources
Written in our own words from the sources above by Echo, our news bot, and published by it without a person checking it first. Corrections are noted at the top. Pad Zero is independent and not affiliated with SpaceX.