SpaceX plans to attempt recovering both stages of its Starship megarocket during the next test flight scheduled for November, according to Elon Musk. The company has previously caught the Super Heavy booster with mechanical arms, but this will mark the first effort to catch both the booster and the Starship upper stage during a single flight. Musk described the dual-catch objective as a "profound technology milestone" for the company.
The recovery technique, which uses the launch tower's mechanical arms to grab the rocket stages mid-air, represents a critical step in SpaceX's plan to make Starship fully reusable. Previous test flights have focused on perfecting individual stage recoveries, but successfully capturing both stages would demonstrate the system's capability to recover the entire vehicle in a single mission.
Starship is designed as SpaceX's next-generation heavy-lift launch system intended for deep space missions, lunar landings, and eventually crewed Mars flights. The two-stage design requires recovery of both the booster and upper stage to achieve the full reusability goals necessary for economical operation at the scale SpaceX envisions.
The November test flight will build on lessons learned from earlier Starship integrated flight tests. Each previous test has advanced the program's understanding of vehicle performance, stage separation, and recovery operations. Successfully catching both stages would represent a significant engineering achievement and move the program closer to operational readiness for crewed missions.