For more than a decade, SpaceX has been developing its Starship megarocket with a single goal in mind: creating the world’s first fully and rapidly reusable launch system. Today, the company aims to clear a major hurdle standing in the way of that goal.
Starship Flight 15, scheduled to lift off from Starbase, Texas, this evening, will mark SpaceX’s first attempt to catch both the Starship upper stage and its Super Heavy booster. The launch window opens at 5:45 p.m. ET and will remain open for 75 minutes. SpaceX will kick off a live webcast of the flight about 30 minutes before launch, and you can watch via the company’s website and its X account, as provided below.
Watch Starship Flight 15https://t.co/xvmIH2diNA
You can also catch the action at any of the third-party livestreams below.
SpaceX has successfully caught the Super Heavy booster on three previous Starship test flights. It does so using the “chopstick” arms on one of the giant “Mechazilla” launch and catch tower systems at Starbase, which snatch the booster from midair during its controlled descent. SpaceX plans to use the same strategy to catch the upper stage on Flight 15, but this will be a bigger challenge.
If today’s mission unfolds as planned, Super Heavy will ignite its boosters at T-0 and propel Starship to space.…
