Starship Flight 15 Planned No Earlier Than Oct. 19, With First Attempt to Catch the Ship at the Launch Tower
Starbase, Texas — SpaceX's 14th Starship test flight was completed on September 28: the vehicle reached Earth orbit for the first time, deployed the first 26 Starlink V3 satellites, and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean several hours later.
According to FOX Weather, the 15th flight could mark an even bigger step: SpaceX is expected to attempt, for the first time, to catch the returning Starship spacecraft itself with the giant mechanical arms — which the company calls "chopsticks" — on the launch tower. SpaceX has successfully caught Super Heavy boosters before, but has never recovered the Starship upper stage this way; a successful catch would be a major leap toward the company's goal of rapidly reflying the same vehicles. SpaceX has not announced an official launch date or confirmed the full mission profile, though planning currently points to no earlier than October 19.
According to an October 16 report by Tech Insider, SpaceX has confirmed the sequence: at least one more Starship test flight from Starbase, Texas, comes first, before the rocket's debut from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida; the Florida pad has moved out of construction and into acceptance testing. Kathy Lueders, SpaceX's Starbase chief, said the company has "essentially done a lot of the initial build of the structures and the systems needed for launching Starship" and is "beginning to step into the sort of acceptance testing and operational testing prior to activation." Separately, the space-news site Behind The Black, citing FAA announcements, reported that a further
Starship launch from Kennedy Space Center is tentatively scheduled for October 30, labeled Starlink 30-1 and described as an operational flight.
A modified version of Starship will serve as the Human Landing System for NASA's Artemis program, ferrying astronauts from lunar orbit to the Moon's surface and back.
Related:
Musk: Starship Flight 15 Is Targeted a Little Before Thanksgiving and Will Try to Catch the Ship
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Photo: 图：星舰从德州星舰基地升空（第11次飞行试飞，资料图）。照片：Shujianyang，Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 4.0。File photo: Starship lifts off from Starbase, Texas, during Flight Test 11. Photo by Shujianyang, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
