BOCA CHICA, Texas — SpaceX is preparing to try something it has never done before: catching both halves of its Starship rocket on the same flight. Elon Musk said Friday that the company will attempt to recover the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage together on the vehicle's upcoming launch, a feat that would mark the first time every major part of an orbital rocket returns to Earth intact.
"SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and Starship on the upcoming flight," Musk wrote, adding that "if both are successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact." He called a dual recovery "the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary."
From Booster Catches to Catching Everything
SpaceX has already shown it can bring the Super Heavy booster back to the launch tower, a maneuver it has repeated on recent flights as it readied Starship V3 hardware for Flight 16. What it has not done is catch the Starship upper stage, which returns from orbital velocity and endures far more punishing reentry heating than the booster.
Pulling off both on one mission would close the loop on full and rapid reuse — the core idea behind Starship's economics, and the reason the vehicle matters so much to Musk's wider plans.
The Hardest Part Is the Heat
Musk was candid about the difficulty, singling out the upper stage's heat shield as the central challenge. "It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, and it's something that we've been working on for a decade, basically. It's so hard," he said. Surviving reentry intact enough to be caught and quickly reflown is the piece that has taken longest to master, and it is exactly what the next flight is designed to test. SpaceX's reusable approach has already spun off new commercial ideas, including a microgravity reentry capsule it recently put on the market.
A Launch About a Week Away
Musk said the attempt is coming soon — "that's what we're going to do in about a week from now" — with SpaceX widely expected to fly the mission, likely using the vehicle known as Ship 42. Company officials have pointed to a target of around November 13 for the next Starship launch, though SpaceX has stressed such dates can move.
If it works, the payoff is enormous. Musk believes Starship can eventually push launch costs below $100 per kilogram to orbit, a level that would reshape everything from satellite deployment to deep-space exploration. Full details on the vehicle are available on SpaceX's Starship page, and the next week could bring one of the program's most important milestones yet.
