SpaceX Targets Starship Catch, Weekly Launches by Early 2027

SpaceX intends to attempt a catch of both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage on the rocket's 15th test flight, company officials said during an earnings call Tuesday, according to Ars Technica. The flight is currently targeted for November and would mark the first time SpaceX tries to recover both halves of the vehicle on the same mission.

What does SpaceX plan to attempt on Flight 15?

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the company has gathered enough data from Flight 14 — which Ars Technica reports launched from Starbase, Texas, and "largely went well despite some issues with the Raptor rocket engine" — to move directly to catching both stages on the next attempt. Musk said he believes success is "more likely than not," while noting the company is "hardware rich" and can absorb failures if the catches do not succeed. Both attempts would take place at SpaceX's Starbase launch and landing towers in South Texas.

Why does the FAA license matter for a return over Mexico?

Catching the booster and upper stage at the launch site requires Starship to fly back over land, including northern Mexico, which has been a regulatory sticking point. SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell addressed that directly on the call: "We have had significant constructive engagement with the FAA, and we expect the license for our Flight 15 to include return to launch site and tower catch for both stages," she said, per Ars Technica. Shotwell's phrasing — an expectation rather than a confirmed approval — leaves the final licensing decision with the Federal Aviation Administration, which governs commercial launch and reentry licenses for vehicles returning over populated or international territory.

What is SpaceX's cadence target, and why?

Beyond the catch attempt, Shotwell outlined a sequence of near-term milestones. SpaceX will try to refly a Starship upper stage "early" next year, and it will attempt a long-delayed propellant transfer demonstration — Starship refueling another Starship in orbit — early in 2027. That orbital refueling test has never been attempted at this scale anywhere, and Ars Technica notes it is central to both SpaceX's and NASA's plans: the data on transfer efficiency and the boil-off rate of liquid oxygen and methane in space will determine how many launches are required to land a Starship on the Moon under NASA's Artemis program. SpaceX's broader goal, per the outlet's headline, is reaching weekly Starship launches by early 2027 — a cadence increase from the current pace, which has included 14 test flights to date.

Why is SpaceX reframing Starship around AI data centers instead of Mars?

The earnings call spent more time on compute than on colonization. Musk and Shotwell described plans to deploy up to 10 gigawatts of ground-based compute capacity in 2027 to support artificial intelligence workloads, according to Ars Technica, which observed that "aspirational talk about sending humans to Mars and settling the red planet" has receded in company messaging. In its place is a long-term bet that Starship becomes the delivery vehicle for a space-based data architecture — first an expanded Starlink constellation, and eventually a proposed "Starmind" orbital data-center network. Both of those depend on Starship reaching the launch frequency and reusability SpaceX is now targeting.

What happens if the catch attempt fails?

Musk's own framing — hardware-rich, failure-tolerant — suggests SpaceX is treating Flight 15 as another data-gathering exercise rather than a must-succeed milestone. That approach mirrors the test program since Starship's early flights, where SpaceX has repeatedly flown vehicles to destruction or partial failure to refine engineering before locking in operational catch procedures. The company has not said what contingency plan would apply if the FAA license is not finalized in time for a November launch, or if engineering issues identified on Flight 14's Raptor engines recur.

What comes next for Starship's flight schedule?

The near-term sequence described on the call runs from the Flight 15 double-catch attempt in November, to a Starship reflight attempt "early" in 2027, to the orbital refueling demonstration that NASA needs for its lunar lander timeline. Ars Technica frames the cadence target — weekly Starship launches by early 2027 — as the connective goal across all three: each milestone depends on faster stage turnaround and fewer vehicle losses than the program has sustained to date. The FAA's final licensing decision on return-to-launch-site operations over Mexican territory remains the near-term variable officials did not fully resolve on the call.