Texas Border Business
By SpaceX
STARBASE, Texas – Starship is preparing to take a major step towards full reusability: bringing the Starship upper stage back to the launch site for a catch by the tower at Starbase, following test flight 15 on November 13th, 2026
On Flight 15, Starship will attempt its first ever return to launch site. On previous flights, Starship ended its mission with a splashdown in the ocean. Those flights demonstrated ascent, in-space maneuvers, payload deploys, and the ability to safely reenter the atmosphere to a pre-defined location with the accuracy needed to permit a catch. During those flights, Starship flew over unpopulated ocean areas during reentry. This was by design, allowing engineers to maximize public safety while maximizing opportunities to learn and improve on Starship’s entry and landing capabilities. With consistent improvements from flight to flight, the SpaceX team has demonstrated that Starship can safely and reliably reenter from space.
To return Starship to Starbase, the spacecraft must now fly a safe trajectory that will take it over inhabited areas in northern Mexico and southern Texas to reach its launch site for catch. Like previous flight testing and the first successful mission to orbit, Starship’s flight profile for this ambitious mission is being designed with opportunities to safely end the mission early if necessary and will follow strict criteria before committing to the final phases of flight.
A SHORT HISTORY OF REENTRY
Across its 30 years of operations from 1981 to 2011, every returning Space Shuttle mission reentered over land, flying over large portions of the United States, Mexico, and several Central American nations on the way to landings in Florida, California, and New Mexico. The same was true of our own Dragon spacecraft for landing sites around Florida from 2020 to 2025, which saw Dragon routinely and safely reenter over land. And every Soyuz and Shenzhou spacecraft from Russia and China, respectively, also reenter over land as they head for their landing sites in Kazakhstan and China.
Starship will now do the same after demonstrating its safe reentry operations on numerous flights. Starship’s previously planned ocean landings allowed us to stress test the hardware in the reentry environment. We repeatedly pushed Starship’s heatshield, control systems, and structure to levels beyond what a vehicle will experience during a nominal reentry back to its launch site. These tests included intentionally removing dozens of heatshield tiles at critical areas and control surfaces on the vehicle, intentionally exposing vulnerable areas on Starship to the extreme heat of reentry. We also executed maneuvers during entry that exposed Starship’s structure and control flaps to significantly higher heating and aerodynamic forces when compared to a nominal reentry. Combined, these tests demonstrated Starship’s ability to successfully survive reentry and reach its intended landing location with a significant factor of safety.
OUR APPROACH TO A SAFE RETURN
On Flight 15, Starship will initially launch to a passively safe suborbital trajectory. This is the same flight profile used on Starship’s first orbital mission and ensures that any issues encountered during ascent or shortly thereafter will result in Starship reentering over a cleared area of the Indian Ocean.
After this initial ascent, flight controllers will assess the health of Starship’s systems before giving a “go” or “no-go” for orbit. If “go”, Starship will then perform an orbital insertion burn with a single Raptor sea-level engine, increasing its speed and achieving orbit around Earth.
Once on orbit, Starship will deploy its payload of Starlink V3 satellites. Three of these satellites have been modified to acquire imagery of Starship’s heatshield. This method of analyzing Starship’s heatshield has been tested on previous flights and is one of several data sources to help inform Starship’s readiness to return to the launch site on Flight 15.
After deploying its payload, Starship will then coast in orbit for another ~21 hours until its orbit aligns with Starbase for a return. During this multi-hour orbital coast, flight controllers will continuously perform manual and automated checks of Starship systems which, similar to the first orbital flight, will be intentionally conservative. They include Raptor engine health, loss of power or communications, the health of the flight computers and navigation sensors, the structural integrity of the propellant tanks and feedlines, the ability to hold tank pressure, and Starship’s ability to control its attitude.
During this prolonged coast phase, flight control teams have several options to end the mission early and return Starship to precleared areas of the Pacific Ocean if needed. These locations include early- and late-mission splashdown options around Hawaii and a mid-mission splashdown opportunity several hundred kilometers off the coast of Chile. These precleared areas, which were also used during Flight 14, provide a safe place to land Starship if any conditions arise that may preclude the ability to perform a safe reentry.
WHAT SHIP CATCH WILL LOOK (AND SOUND) LIKE
Flight controllers will only permit Starship to return to Starbase if the vehicle’s status meets our internally developed, and FAA-approved, conditions for a return to launch site and catch.
f these requirements are met, Starship will perform a deorbit burn with a single Raptor 3 engine. This deorbit burn will alter Starship’s path to place the vehicle on a course to reenter Earth’s atmosphere at a specific point over the Pacific Ocean, thousands of kilometers uprange from Starbase.
During reentry, Starship can alter its flight path by moving its four control flaps. This will permit Starship to maintain a safe and known trajectory while guiding itself with high precision control toward Starbase. This control will also allow Starship to carry out a series of small turns in its trajectory to intentionally fly over sparsely populated areas of northern Mexico and southern Texas.
As Starship approaches Starbase from the west, the vehicle will weave its way around the major cities in the Rio Grande Valley, passing to the north of South Padre Island and out over the Gulf of America as it makes its final turn south towards Starbase. This banking maneuver has been demonstrated several times on previous Starship flight tests.
During this phase, residents of Cameron County and those in the nearby area may hear one or more sonic booms as Starship approaches the launch site. A sonic boom is a brief, thunder-like noise a person on the ground hears when an aircraft or other vehicle in the area flies faster than the speed of sound. The sonic boom does not present a health risk and what people experience will depend on weather and other conditions.
As Starship arrives over Starbase, it will perform the final bellyflop maneuver down towards the tower at Pad 2. This bellyflop was proven during a series of high-altitude test hops and during numerous suborbital flight tests. Shortly before reaching the tower, Starship will ignite its three sea-level Raptor engines and flip itself vertical while stowing its flaps. After the flip is complete, Starship will down-select to two Raptor engines and maneuver between the tower’s mechanical arms, before down-selecting to a single engine as it comes to a near hover. The arms will close rapidly to catch Starship on its two catch fittings just below the forward flaps. Once Starship registers contact with the tower arms, it will shut down its final Raptor engine.
During reentry, flight controllers will have several options to end the reentry early and safely by intentionally tumbling Starship to ensure that it breaks up in the atmosphere before reaching land. There is also a late-reentry option to send Starship into the Gulf of America if any of its systems or the tower itself encounter an issue after reentry that would preclude a safe catch at Starbase.
THE HOLY GRAIL OF ROCKETRY
Recovering an entire orbital launch system has never been done, and Starship has always been designed to change that. This full recovery is often referred to as the Holy Grail of rocketry as it enables full and rapid reuse of a rocket – opening the door to airplane-like cadence where a vehicle flies again rapidly.
Watch “The Holy Grail of Rocketry”, a recent episode in the ongoing Starship series that looks back at SpaceX’s efforts to make rockets reusable and the work being done today to achieve full and rapid reusability.
Reaching this milestone with Starship will allow SpaceX to unlock the true capability of Starship and will enable future missions to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, expand the worldwide Starlink network, launch our Starmind supercompute constellation, extend the light of consciousness to the stars, and make life multiplanetary.
Follow the link to see more info and watch a few videos.
Information source: SpaceX
