SpaceX Lists Starship Flight 15 and Sets a 2028 Moon Cargo Marker: What Is Scheduled and What Is Not

SpaceX has listed Starship Flight 15 as an upcoming launch, with the USSF-317 mission scheduled for November 18, 2026, in a window between 03:14 and 07:14 GMT. Today is November 13, so that window opens in five days.

The company describes Starship as a two-part system: an upper stage and the Super Heavy booster. It calls the combined vehicle a fully reusable transportation system for crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. SpaceX gives the full stack a height of 124 metres (407 feet) and a diameter of 9 metres (29.5 feet). It lists payload capacity above 100 metric tonnes to orbit in a fully reusable configuration, and calls the vehicle the world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed.

The booster is 72 metres tall and also 9 metres across. It carries 3,650 tonnes of propellant, the fuel and oxidiser a rocket burns, and produces 8,240 tonnes-force (18.1 million pounds-force) of thrust. One tonne-force is the push needed to hold one metric tonne against gravity, which makes it a handy unit for comparing engines. SpaceX says the booster uses 33 Raptor engines burning sub-cooled liquid methane and liquid oxygen, meaning the propellants are chilled below their normal boiling points to pack in more mass. The company states the booster is designed to return to the launch site and be caught by the launch tower, which is the mechanism behind its reusability claim.

The upper stage stands 52 metres tall, also 9 metres across. It holds 1,600 tonnes of propellant and produces 1,614 tonnes-force (3.5 million pounds-force) of thrust. It is powered by six engines: three Raptors for sea-level flight and three Raptor Vacuum (RVac) engines for use in space.

The Raptor itself is 1.3 metres in diameter and 2.9 metres high, with thrust listed at 250 tonnes-force (551 thousand pounds-force). SpaceX states the engine delivers twice the thrust of the Falcon 9's Merlin. Thirty-three of those engines at the listed figure would sum to 8,250 tonnes-force, close to the 8,240 tonnes-force listed for the booster. The company does not explain the difference.

One forward-looking figure on the page concerns the Moon. SpaceX states that cargo flights to the lunar surface for research, development and exploratory missions are to start no earlier than 2028, at a rate of $100 million per metric ton. Taken literally, a full 100-tonne load at that rate would correspond to $10 billion. That is arithmetic on the stated rate, not a contract value, and the company has not tied the rate to any named customer on the page.

For readers who price launch capacity, two parts of that statement carry the most weight. The first is the rate, which gives a per-tonne benchmark for lunar cargo. The second is the 2028 start date, which is phrased as a future intent. Neither is an event yet. The Flight 15 and USSF-317 entries are scheduled events, but the lunar service is a plan with a floor date.

The reusability claim carries most of the economic weight. The booster is described as designed for catch-and-return, so the cost per flight depends on how reliably that design performs once it is in operation. The page presents the catch as design intent. Whether the stated payload, pricing and schedule hold will depend on flight results that have not yet been reported.

For now, the November 18 window and the 2028 lunar start are the dated items a planner can point to.