Starship Flight 15 Is Set for Friday With the First Attempt to Catch the Ship, and Vulcan Returns the Same Day
SpaceX is aiming to catch both the booster and the upper stage at Starbase on 13 November, pending regulatory approval, while ULA's Vulcan flies 40 Amazon Leo satellites hours earlier.
Outspoken Digest Technology Desk
Monday, November 9, 2026/2 min read
Friday, 13 November looks like a big day on the launch pad. SpaceX is targeting Starship Flight 15 from Starbase, Texas, with a launch window of 5:45 to 7:00 p.m. ET, and the plan is to catch both the Super Heavy booster and, for the first time, the Starship upper stage, according to SpacePolicyOnline's week-ahead calendar, published on Sunday. The launch is still described there as pending regulatory approval, and the page does not confirm that the FAA has granted it.
The same calendar has United Launch Alliance flying a Vulcan from Cape Canaveral earlier on the same day.
When is Starship Flight 15, and what is being caught?
The target date came from SpaceX itself. KeepTrack's SpaceX brief reports that Kiko Dontchev, the company's vice president of launch, gave 13 November on stage at the UP.Summit, the first target to come from a SpaceX executive rather than from FAA air-traffic planning slides, which had earlier shown 8 November and then 12 November. SpaceX has not posted a mission page or a launch time.
The hardware is Booster 22 and Ship 42. Booster 22 fired all 33 Raptor engines in a full-duration static fire on 25 October, and Ship 42 ran all six engines for 60 seconds on 27 October, per KeepTrack. On the third-quarter earnings call Elon Musk said the flight would try to catch both stages and called a ship catch "more likely than not." SpacePolicyOnline says the ship catch is planned about 22 hours 32 minutes after liftoff, which would put it on Saturday afternoon, Eastern time.
Does Starship have FAA approval yet?
Not as far as the published coverage shows. The Space Launch Schedule write-up of a NASASpaceflight article dated 6 November says the flight is a dual catch attempt that awaits an FAA green light, with both vehicles in final checkouts and a no-earlier-than date of 13 November. Bringing a ship back to the tower means a return over populated areas, so the licence is the gate. Treat 13 November as a target, not a promise; Starship dates have slipped before.
The FAA also has public scoping meetings on increased Starship launches at Starbase on 17 November in Brownsville and 18 November online, per SpacePolicyOnline.
What else launches this week?
Vulcan flies on Friday at 12:54 p.m. ET with 40 Amazon Leo satellites. It is the rocket's first launch since February, SpacePolicyOnline says, and the Space Force has paused Vulcan for its own missions and is reassigning some launches to SpaceX. On Tuesday the Senate Commerce Committee holds a nominations hearing for NASA's chief financial officer and inspector general.
So the week has two stories in one: a test of whether the tower can catch an upper stage, and a test of whether the Vulcan can get back to work.
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