SpaceX has finished the last big engine tests ahead of Starship Flight 15. On October 28, 2026, the company said Ship 42 completed a full-duration six-engine static fire and a single-Raptor burn that simulated a deorbit. Those Ship 42 firings took place around October 26 and 27 at Starbase in South Texas. A few days earlier, on October 25, SpaceX ran a full-duration 33-engine static fire on Booster 22 for the same flight.
A static fire is a ground test. The vehicle stays clamped in place while the engines light and run. It's one of the final checks before a stack heads toward launch.
Flight 15 is targeted for November, pending regulatory approval. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said on the company's third-quarter earnings call that the flight will try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage with the launch tower's chopstick arms. SpaceX has caught Super Heavy before. It has not yet caught a ship returning from orbit. Musk said that if both catches succeed, it would be the first time an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the company expects the Flight 15 license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to include return to the launch site and tower catch for both stages.
That dual catch would close the reuse loop for a fully reusable orbital-class rocket built and flown in Texas. Faster turnaround supports denser Starlink launches. More constellation capacity is good news for East Texas businesses that already lean on satellite backup when fiber or cellular falters.
We've covered Starship's recovery path before, including when Ship 40 came home as the first upper stage brought back intact. Flight 15 aims at the next step. The goal is to catch both stages at Starbase instead of fishing them out of the ocean.
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Image: SpaceX
