Musk: Starship Flight 15 Is Targeted a Little Before Thanksgiving and Will Try to Catch the Ship
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said Starship's 15th flight is about four to six weeks away, "a little bit before Thanksgiving" by his estimate, and that it will attempt to catch the ship itself with the launch tower. SpaceX has not announced a firm date. According to Reuters, Starship reached orbit for the first time on its 14th flight on September 28, completing six Earth orbits and a satellite deployment in a major program milestone.
On recovery, the Starship vehicle Ship 40 has now returned to Starbase. SpaceX calls it "the first Starship to return to its launch site": it flew Flight 13 on July 24, stayed largely intact after splashing down in the Indian Ocean, was towed to Christmas Island where crews took heat-shield samples, and arrived at the Port of Brownsville aboard the transport ship Forte on October 7. It now stands upright in a Starbase Megabay beside three other Starships, set to provide first-of-its-kind data on a flown heat shield, Raptor engines and avionics.
Musk outlined the catch attempt for the next flight at a company event in Texas on October 10. Space media had earlier cited air-traffic planning material listing October 19 as a provisional no-earlier-than date for Flight 15, which has since slipped.
Starship is the human landing system NASA selected for its Artemis lunar missions, so its orbital reliability bears directly on the Moon timeline.
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Photo: 图：星舰发射升空。照片：Starship Link，CC BY 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。/ Photo: A Starship vehicle lifts off. Photo by Starship Link, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
