SpaceX’s upcoming Starship launch on Friday will mark its inaugural attempt to retrieve the spacecraft at its launch site in Texas, instead of allowing it to fall into the ocean. This is a significant milestone in Elon Musk’s initiative to create a fully reusable rocket system.
The Starship rocket, towering at 124 meters, is set to take off at 5:45 p.m. ET from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas. This will be the 15th flight of Starship since the beginning of 2023 and the second mission to deploy operational Starlink satellites. Thus, the mission serves both as a revenue-generating venture for the satellite connectivity division and as a crucial test for a rocket still under development.
As of Friday morning, SpaceX had not yet obtained a launch permit from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The FAA, which usually grants licenses a day before previous Starship launches, has not provided an immediate comment regarding the situation.
Musk’s aerospace and AI company sees the next-generation Starship rocket as vital for enhancing its Starlink network with additional satellites and, in the longer term, for launching a comprehensive array of AI data-processing satellites dubbed Starmind, as the company increasingly positions itself as a major infrastructure player.
In September, SpaceX successfully launched Starship, marking the first time it placed the rocket and its satellites into orbit, despite experiencing mid-flight engine failures. That mission was originally intended to span 10 hours but concluded after about three hours with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
SpaceX amazed engineers, scientists, and space fans by successfully returning its heaviest rocket booster to the launch pad in one piece. Beyond the technical achievement of the Starship rocket, its reusability is anticipated to significantly lower mission expenses.
For the upcoming mission, SpaceX plans to retrieve both the Starship upper stage, which acts as the spacecraft, and the Super Heavy booster back in Texas. The upper stage is expected to return approximately 22 hours post-launch. SpaceX has stated that achieving this would represent a “breakthrough moment” in establishing Starship as a dependable, rapidly reusable rocket if everything goes according to plan.
Preparing for Starship
SpaceX has successfully brought the 71-meter-tall Super Heavy booster back to its launchpad three times after sending Starship into space, using large mechanical arms attached to its launch tower to catch it vertically about 10 minutes post-launch. The most recent “tower catch” occurred in March 2025.
In preparation for the 15th mission, SpaceX needs to relocate the Super Heavy booster from the launchpad to accommodate Starship, which is anticipated to re-enter after completing 14 orbits around the Earth. This will set the stage for the first Starship catch to happen around 3:45 p.m. ET on Saturday.
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Musk has indicated that he aims to achieve a weekly schedule of Starship launches by the first half of 2027, while SpaceX has mentioned the possibility of launching Starship from a new facility in Florida by late 2026.
NASA has contributed approximately $3.2 billion to support the development of Starship since selecting the rocket in 2021 to serve as a lunar lander for its astronauts under the Artemis program, which is worth billions. SpaceX has invested at least $15 billion of its own capital into the rocket’s development.
A social media clip captured in Turks and Caicos displays debris streaking across the sky following the disintegration of the new Starship rocket during a test flight.
NASA and SpaceX anticipate that Starship will be capable of landing humans on the moon by 2028, although several significant testing milestones still lie ahead, which analysts and industry experts believe may delay that timeline.
These milestones include showcasing complex fuel transfers between Starship “tanker” rockets in orbit—a critical procedure that will enable Starship to extend its reach beyond the Earth’s orbit to the moon.
Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is also in the process of developing a lunar lander named Blue Moon for NASA under the Artemis initiative. Blue Moon is set to join Starship and NASA’s Orion capsule in Earth’s orbit next year for Artemis III, a docking test mission before NASA embarks on its planned lunar landing missions with Artemis IV.
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