Overview
- SpaceX announced during its Tuesday Oct. 20 Q3 earnings call that Flight 15, targeted for November, will try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Ship upper stage with the launch‑tower 'chopstick' arms.
- The company played a new animation and said crews have run tower‑catch hardware tests and preflight checks on the Ship vehicle assigned to Flight 15.
- SpaceX says it has had constructive engagement with the FAA and that the Flight 15 license is likely to include return‑to‑launch‑site recovery and tower catches for both stages, though a final license has not been posted.
- Flight 14 on Sept. 28 reached orbit and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites but both stages splashed down unrecovered, and catching the Ship is harder because it returns faster, hotter, and farther than the booster.
- Elon Musk called success “more likely than not,” and SpaceX says a successful full recovery would let it inspect, refurbish and refly Starship more rapidly, a step that could drive the company’s plan for much higher launch cadence and larger Starlink deployments.