Today’s the Day: SpaceX Goes for the First Catch of an Entire Starship, the Rocket Built to Fly From Pecan Island

Liftoff from Texas is set for 4:45 p.m. Central. Minutes later SpaceX will try to snatch the 33-engine booster out of the air with its tower’s arms. Then, after a day in orbit, it wants to do the same with the ship.

Within the hour, the biggest rocket ever built will light 33 engines on the Texas coast and try something no one has done before.

SpaceX’s Starship Flight 15 is set to lift off from Starbase, Texas, in a 75-minute window that opens at 4:45 p.m. Central today. Space.com reported Friday afternoon that the Federal Aviation Administration had approved the flight, clearing the last hurdle. The Times has not yet seen the license on the FAA’s website.

If it works, SpaceX says, it will be the first complete recovery of an orbital launch system: both halves of the rocket caught by the same tower that launched them. That is the trick SpaceX needs to master before it can fly the way it plans to from Pecan Island.

First, the catch

Liftoff is only the opening act. Here is SpaceX’s plan, from its mission page:

The booster. After pushing the ship toward space, the Super Heavy booster separates, flips around and fires its engines to fly back to Starbase. As it drops beside the launch tower, two giant steel arms (SpaceX calls them “chopsticks”) close around it and hold it in midair. It’s the first catch attempt for the newer, bigger V3 version of the booster. SpaceX has caught three boosters before, and flown two of them again.
The ship. Starship keeps climbing to about 275 kilometers, around 170 miles up, and releases 26 Starlink satellites. Three of them carry cameras to photograph the ship’s heat shield in orbit so engineers can check it before bringing it home.
A day in space. The ship then circles Earth about 14 times over more than 22 hours.

Saturday afternoon: the homecoming

The second act happens tomorrow. The FAA’s air traffic plan lists a reentry window for the ship on Saturday from 2:56 to 6:14 p.m. Central. If flight controllers confirm the ship is healthy enough to come back, it will fall through the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, glowing behind its tile heat shield, and head for the same tower that caught the booster.

If something isn’t right, SpaceX says it has planned safe places to bring the ship down over the ocean instead.

Why Vermilion Parish should watch

This is the rocket SpaceX wants to fly from the coast at Pecan Island. One of the company’s Louisiana job listings calls the Pecan Island site a “Starship high-rate launch site,” and the state says launches there are planned to begin in 2029. [Here’s what we know about Starbase Louisiana.](/news/starbase-louisiana-what-we-know/)

High-rate is the key word. A rocket that comes back in one piece can be refueled and flown again in days instead of rebuilt over months. That is how SpaceX talks about hundreds of launches a year, and it is why a full catch tonight and tomorrow matters to the people who will live next to the next Starbase.

How to watch

Space.com reports SpaceX moved the start of its live webcast up to about 3:58 p.m. Central, on its website and X account. The FAA’s plan lists Saturday at the same time as a backup launch date if today’s attempt is called off.

Launch times and the countdown are also on the Times’ [Starbase Watch page](/starbase/#live). We’ll update this story with how it went.