SpaceX is preparing to launch its Starship rocket on Friday for a test flight that will attempt for the first time to catch the spacecraft on land after a day in orbit .
The 407-foot-tall rocket, taller than the Statue of Liberty, is scheduled to lift off at 4:45 p.m. CT from SpaceX's Starbase facilities in South Texas . This marks the 15th flight since 2023 and the second to carry operational Starlink satellites . Dozens of spectators had already gathered at the launch site ahead of the attempt .
After launch, the 236-foot-tall Super Heavy booster will return to the launchpad within about 10 minutes. It will be caught by the tower's mechanical arms, a maneuver SpaceX has completed three times before, most recently in March 2025 . The Starship upper stage will then complete 14 orbits around Earth over roughly 22 hours. It will deploy 26 next-generation Starlink satellites before attempting its own catch at the tower around 2:45 p.m. CT on Saturday .
SpaceX has said the catch would be a "breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket" . If the company detects any problems during the flight, it will instead direct the spacecraft to a controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, either near Hawaii or off the coast of Chile .
As of Friday morning, SpaceX had not yet received a launch license from the US Federal Aviation Administration, which has typically issued licenses a day prior to past Starship launches . The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment .
SpaceX last launched Starship in September, taking the rocket to orbit for the first time despite some engines shutting down mid-flight . That mission ended after roughly three hours with an intact splashdown in the Pacific Ocean .
NASA has delivered roughly $3.2 billion to SpaceX since selecting the rocket in 2021 to serve as a moon lander for the Artemis program . SpaceX has put at least $15 billion of its own funds into development . NASA and SpaceX expect Starship to land humans on the moon by 2028, though analysts and industry engineers believe several testing milestones will push that timeline back .
Elon Musk has said he expects to enter a weekly cadence of Starship launches by the first half of 2027 . SpaceX has said it could begin launching from a new Florida launchpad by the end of 2026 .
