Starship | Starlink Group 31-2 (Starship Flight 15)
SpaceX launches Starship V3 carrying Starlink Group 31-2 (Starship Flight 15) from Orbital Launch Pad 2, SpaceX Starbase, TX, USA, United States of America on November 13, 2026 at 22:45 UTC. Launch Library files that T-0 to the minute. The date is still provisional and can move.
COUNTDOWN
FLIGHT PLAN
The window opens at 2026-11-13 22:45:00Z and closes at 2026-11-14 00:00:00Z. Awaiting official confirmation - current date is known with some certainty.
FIELD KIT / OPTICS
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MISSION BRIEF
15th test flight of the two-stage Starship launch vehicle and 4th flight of Starship V3. Second Starship flight to deploy satellites (a group of Starlink satellites known as Starlink Group 31-2) into stable Low Earth Orbit and first ever to attempt returning the Starship 2nd stage back to the launch site. The ship is expected to fly at an altitude approximately 275 km above Earth and complete approximately 14 orbits around the planet for more than 22 hours, with the ship expected to attempt returning back to Starbase, Texas on its launch pad by pad arms catching. The booster’s primary test objective on Flight 15 will be executing a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and landing by pad arms catching. This will also be the 1st Starship V3 booster to attempt returning to its launch site. Starship will deliver 26 Starlink V3 satellites to orbit for the second time, which aim to greatly expand the network's capacity and user speeds. Each Starlink V3 satellite will add 1 Tbps of capacity to the constellation. 3 of the satellites have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship’s heatshield and transmit imagery down to operators.
SOURCE: LAUNCH LIBRARY 2 // THE SPACE DEVS
LAUNCH CORRIDOR
- Due east
- The lowest inclination a direct launch from here can reach is 26.0°. That’s this pad’s own latitude. Flying east also gets the most free speed from Earth’s rotation.
- Due south
- The polar corridor, at 90° inclination, passes over both poles. It gets no help from Earth’s spin, so the same rocket can carry less.
Drag the globe to turn it. The shading is the real terminator, and it moves.
A globe of the Earth centred on Orbital Launch Pad 2 at latitude 26.00 degrees north, longitude 97.16 degrees west. Two curved lines leave the pad. The solid gold line runs due east and marks the lowest orbital inclination a direct launch from this site can reach, 26.0 degrees, equal to the pad’s latitude of 26.0 degrees. The dashed cyan line runs due south and marks the polar corridor at 90 degrees inclination. The darkened part of the globe is the night side. The surface wind is from 315° at 15 km/h. That's the cyan arrow at the pad.
LAUNCH SITE
Orbital Launch Pad 2
SpaceX Starbase, TX, USA, United States of America
OBSERVED 2026-11-11 11:00:00Z // OPEN-METEO (CC BY 4.0) // GENERAL CONDITIONS, NOT LAUNCH CRITERIA
Minimum direct inclination 26°. This pad is 26° north of the equator, so a direct launch can't reach an orbit inclined less than 26°. An orbit of inclination i never passes over latitudes beyond ±i. Getting to an equatorial orbit, which geostationary satellites need, takes a 26° plane change at some point in the flight. Inclinations of 26° and up are reachable straight off the pad. The ground here moves east at about 418 m/s with Earth's spin. That's 465 m/s at the equator, falling with the cosine of latitude. A launch due east keeps that head start.
DATUM WGS-84 // EQUIRECTANGULAR PROJECTION // ORBIT FIGURES DERIVED FROM THE PUBLISHED LATITUDE
Open this pad in a mapPAD CONDITIONS
SURFACE WIND @ 10 M
15km/h
Blowing from the north-west, bearing 315 degrees
GUSTING
26km/h
Overcast
SOURCE: OPEN-METEO CC BY 4.0
The observed figures are general weather at the coordinates of Orbital Launch Pad 2. They aren’t the launch rules. The operator and the range write those for each mission, and they cover things this forecast doesn’t carry, like electric fields, cloud layers higher up and winds along the rocket’s path. Only the operator publishes them. Wind often stops a countdown, but no number here is a limit for this flight. Nothing here is a go or no-go call. No operator figure was published for this attempt.