SpaceX Aims to Catch Both Starship Stages for the First Time

"Splashdown confirmed," SpaceX posted on Sept. 28. "Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the first orbital flight of Starship!" Ship 41 deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites, but a helium leak and the engine loss cut the planned near 10-hour mission short, ending in a contingency zone in the North Pacific.

How will Flight 15 unfold?

The flight follows a path similar to Flight 14, launching to an inclination of nearly 32 degrees — the last mission used 30.5 degrees, passing just south of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Key milestones on the timeline:

• Boostback burn: about 41 seconds, returning Booster 22 toward the launch site.
• Booster landing burn: starts around T+00:06:10 on 13 engines, stepping down to five, then three; catch at roughly T+00:06:35.
• Orbital insertion burn: around T+00:26:10, using a single center Raptor fed from the header tanks.
• Starlink deploy: begins around T+00:35:01, running until at least T+01:17:40 — 26 satellites.
• Deorbit burn: around T+21:35:57, lasting about 10 seconds; reentry begins near T+22:10:46.
• Ship landing burn startup: around T+22:32:16, before flipping above the tower for the catch.

Booster 22 will fly an unusual alignment maneuver during its landing burn: pitch and slide toward the tower, roll to line up its grid fins, then pitch away before settling into the chopsticks.

What are the abort options?

After engine cutoff, Ship 42 sits on a suborbital trajectory for safety, as on Flight 14. If anything goes wrong on ascent, it can reenter without being stranded in orbit. An 18-minute coast follows while controllers confirm the ship is healthy; if it isn't, the ship reenters over the Indian Ocean.

Three checkpoints during the long coast allow SpaceX to end the mission early. The first, around T+01:27:46, brings the ship down north of Hawaii. The second, around T+07:15:35, targets waters off Chile — where Flight 14 would have ended on a full mission. At that point, teams must be confident Ship 42 is good for another 13 hours.

The final checkpoint, around T+20:41:55, decides between a land return and a North Pacific splashdown. After reentry over Mexico and South Texas — steering with its flaps away from population centers, passing north of South Padre Island — the ship turns out over the Gulf before heading back to Pad 2. That turn is the last abort point. As a final safeguard, controllers can tumble the ship so it breaks up and burns rather than coming down in one piece.

Before the coast, SpaceX will again fly three camera-equipped Starlink satellites to image the heat shield — a key check for clearing the overland return. Ship 42 also carries large patches of curved tiles, proven on earlier flights, whose surfaces follow the hull's curve and seal gaps that let hot gas reach the structure beneath.

When can it launch — and what happens if it works?

The window opens at 4:45 p.m. CST on Nov. 13 and runs 75 minutes. Navigational warnings show backup opportunities from Nov. 14 to Nov. 20. Two primary road closures — Nov. 13 and Nov. 14, both 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. CST — cover securing each stage after a catch. At the time of writing, the FAA has not yet published an updated launch license.

If both vehicles come home, the flight marks a major step toward full and rapid reuse — the key to cheaper orbital access and the in-orbit refilling Starship needs for its Artemis lunar landings. It would also start a true fleet: boosters and ships flown, caught, and flown again.