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SpaceX plans to launch its Starship megarocket on an unprecedented mission today (Nov. 13), and you can watch the action live.
Starship is scheduled to launch on its 15th test flight today from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas, during a 75-minute window that opens at 5:45 p.m. EST (2245 GMT; 4:45 p.m. local Texas time). SpaceX plans to bring both of Starship’s stages back to Starbase for a catch by the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms — something it has never done before.
You can watch it all live here at Space.com. And there should be a lot to see: Starship Flight 15 will last more than 22 hours, if all goes according to plan.
Starship consists of two elements: a huge booster known as Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft called Starship, or Ship for short. Both are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable — a first in the world of orbital spaceflight.
The rapidity of Starship’s reuse hinges heavily on SpaceX’s recovery strategy: Returning both vehicles directly to the launch mount will enable much faster inspection, refurbishment and reflight, the company has said.
SpaceX has already caught Super Heavy, pulling the feat off on three previous Starship test flights. But it has never tried to do so with Ship, which flies farther and faster than the booster and is therefore a more challenging vehicle to recover.
So today’s flight is a pretty big deal for SpaceX.
“If successful, this will mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and a breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket,” the company wrote in a Flight 15 mission description.
Watch On
The action will unspool over two days, if all goes to plan. Super Heavy will return to Starbase for a touchdown just 6.5 minutes after launch, but Ship will continue on to low Earth orbit.
The upper stage will deploy 26 of SpaceX’s next-gen Starlink V3 satellites, during a 42-minute stretch beginning about 35 minutes after liftoff. This will be just the second batch of V3 spacecraft to reach orbit, after the 26 that went up on Flight 14 on Sept. 28.
Ship will then stay aloft for nearly a full day. The mission plan calls for the upper stage to return to Starbase for its chopsticks catch on Saturday afternoon (Nov. 14), about 22.5 hours after liftoff.
There’s no guarantee things will go according to plan, however. SpaceX will call off a Ship catch if the vehicle experiences any issues during Flight 15. If something crops up, the company will steer Ship to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, either near Hawaii or off the coast of Chile.
So it’ll be a busy weekend for SpaceX, and for space fans who want to keep tabs on the mission. And we can help you out there, with our Flight 15 updates page.
