SpaceX sets Friday Starship launch for 1645 local time, 75-minute window

Ship catch decision to follow in-space vehicle assessment

SpaceX said it would only decide to attempt a catch of the Ship upper stage after carefully assessing the vehicle while it is in space. If any problems are detected, various points during the flight allow the rocket stage to be brought down in the ocean instead. The 124m-tall Starship — the tallest, heaviest and most powerful rocket ever flown — is scheduled to lift off from the Starbase launchpad in Texas on Friday at 1645 local time (2245 GMT), within a 75-minute-long launch window.

Six and a half minutes after liftoff, the Super Heavy booster, the bottom part of the rocket, is due back at the launch tower for the first planned catch. The Ship will press on into orbit, deploy 26 satellites for the Starlink constellation that provides high-speed internet from space, and complete 14 orbits before returning for the second catch attempt about 22 and a half hours after taking off. Both stages are to be grabbed out of the air by the launch tower’s mechanical arms, nicknamed chopsticks.

SpaceX has recovered the Super Heavy booster with the chopsticks on three earlier test flights. The Ship reached orbit for the first time in September but has never been grabbed by the arms; each time it has flown, the upper stage has splashed down in the ocean. A catch of both stages would be the first full recovery of a rocket that has been to space, paving the way for making Starship reusable so it can fly repeatedly. Building a fully reusable rocket is a long-held ambition for SpaceX.

Reuse already carries SpaceX’s launch economics. In 2015, the company became the first to vertically land part of a rocket with its Falcon 9 booster, and Falcon 9 rockets now fly more than a hundred times a year, with booster reuse dramatically cutting the cost of launch. Bringing back an entire Starship could take that further, says Prof Malcolm Macdonald, President of Royal Aeronautical Society. “A successful double catch would be visually spectacular, but full reusability has the potential to fundamentally change the economics of accessing space,” he said. “One successful flight will not prove that model, but it could mark an important transition: from demonstrating that Starship can fly, to demonstrating how Starship could operate.”

NASA will be watching the flight closely, because the SpaceX rocket is set to play a vital part in its Artemis programme, which will see astronauts land on the Moon. The agency has given SpaceX a contract to configure the Ship into a lander that will eventually take astronauts down to the lunar surface, and the progress of Starship has direct implications for NASA’s attempt to land humans on the Moon in 2028.

SpaceX is not the only company working with NASA on the effort. Blue Origin, owned by rival tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, also holds a contract to use its New Glenn rocket and lander for the Moon touchdown. Both companies will play a key role in Artemis III, currently planned for summer 2027, in which four astronauts in NASA’s Orion spacecraft will attempt to dock with both the SpaceX and Blue Origin landers. Starship will need to make a lot of progress in the coming months to meet those commitments, and the rocket’s development has run far slower than SpaceX had intended.

Blue Origin also has much work to do. The company’s rocket exploded earlier this year, totally destroying its launchpad in Florida. Blue Origin had said it would be back in action by the end of this year, but a return to flight has now been delayed to early in 2027.

NASA is under pressure to meet its timelines. Its administrator, Jared Isaacman, has said America is in a race with China to get to the Moon, and China plans to land its taikonauts on the lunar surface by 2030. After SpaceX went public earlier this year, its shareholders will be carefully monitoring Friday’s flight, as will the US space agency.