When is Starship Flight 16? No date yet, and what to watch

SpaceX has not announced a date for Starship Flight 16 as of 15 November 2026. Its official launches page lists no Flight 16 mission, and SpaceX has not named the booster or ship that will fly it. Flight 15 lifted off on 13 November, and on Saturday 14 November the tower at Starbase caught its ship, Ship 42, at about 3:21 p.m. CST, the first catch of a Starship upper stage.

Some people search for Flight 16 as IFT-16, short for integrated flight test 16, a name SpaceX used for its early Starship flights. For the countdown to whichever Starship flight is next, see our next Starship launch page.

Status as of 15 November 2026: no Flight 16 date, window or vehicles from SpaceX. We will update this page, the Starship launch tracker and the next Starship launch page as soon as SpaceX posts one.

What has SpaceX said about Flight 16?

Nothing official yet. We checked three places on 15 November 2026:

• SpaceX's launches page lists upcoming Falcon 9 missions, but no Starship flight. Flight 15 has dropped off the upcoming list, and Flight 16 has not been added.
• SpaceX's posts on X about Starship since Flight 15 cover the flight, up to the ship catch. None mention Flight 16.
• Elon's posts around Flight 15 talked about that flight only. After the catch he posted that he was inspecting Ship 42. On SpaceX's 20 October earnings webcast, Elon said he expects a "weekly" Starship launch rate in the first half of 2027, Ars Technica reported. That is a company goal, not a Flight 16 date.

What happened on Flight 15?

Flight 15 matters for Flight 16, because SpaceX normally studies each flight's data before the next one. Here is what SpaceX has said:

• Liftoff: about 4:47 p.m. Central Standard Time (CST) on Friday 13 November 2026, from Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas, with Booster 22 and Ship 42. SpaceX has not posted an exact clock time.
• Booster: SpaceX diverted Super Heavy to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf. It was not caught. In its flight summary, SpaceX says the boostback burn ended early due to low fuel mass, with the root cause under investigation, so the booster aborted automatically and diverted. It made a landing burn over the Gulf, and SpaceX says its flight termination system was triggered after the engines cut off.
• Ship and payload: Ship 42 reached orbit, and SpaceX said all 26 Starlink V3 satellites are in orbit.
• Ship return: after more than 20 hours in space, Ship 42 made a good deorbit burn at about 2:25 p.m. CST on Saturday 14 November, reentered and flew back to Starbase. The tower caught it at about 3:21 p.m. CST. "Mechazilla catches Starship!" SpaceX posted. It was the first catch of a Starship upper stage.

For the full timeline and every update, see the Flight 15 page and the Starship Flight 15 recap.

Which booster and ship could fly on Flight 16?

SpaceX has not named them. For Flight 15, SpaceX named Ship 42 on 28 October, 16 days before liftoff, and Booster 22 on 10 November, three days before liftoff.

Starbase trackers have followed the next pair, Booster 23 and Ship 43, through testing since October. NASASpaceflight showed Ship 43 practising catch tests at Pad 2 on 26 October. That is tracker reporting, not a SpaceX announcement, so we treat the Flight 16 vehicles as unconfirmed.

Does Flight 16 need FAA approval?

Yes. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licenses every Starship launch. On 13 November 2026, the day of Flight 15, the FAA issued revision 10 of SpaceX's Starship licence, number VOL 23-129, according to the FAA's licence database. Seeking Alpha reported that this revision authorised a single Flight 15 launch, plus the ship's return. So Flight 16 will most likely need another licence change.

Two other FAA points are worth knowing:

• Yearly limit: the FAA currently allows up to 25 Starship launches a year from Starbase.
• More launches under review: the FAA is studying a SpaceX proposal for up to 100 launches a year in a first phase, and up to 456 later. Its project page says the public meetings from 17 to 19 November are now online only, and comments close on 7 December 2026. Nothing has been approved yet.

The FAA's Starship project page, last updated on 10 November, says nothing about Flight 15's outcome. As of this update on 15 November, we have seen no FAA statement on Flight 15.

Where will Flight 16 launch from?

SpaceX has not said. Flights 12, 13, 14 and 15 all lifted off from Pad 2 at Starbase. Flights 1 to 11 used Pad 1. SpaceX is also preparing to launch Starship from Florida, but it has not linked any Florida launch to Flight 16. See our Starbase launch site guide.

What usually decides the date of the next Starship flight?

Four things, in my view, based on how earlier flights were prepared:

1. Flight data. SpaceX reviews what happened on the last flight. A clean flight helps. A surprise, such as Flight 15's booster divert, may need fixes first. SpaceX says the root cause of that booster's short boostback burn is under investigation.
2. Hardware tests. The next booster and ship need cryogenic tests, where the tanks are filled with super-cold liquid, and static fires, short engine firings on the ground. For Flight 15, SpaceX finished Ship 42's static fires on 28 October and moved Booster 22 to the pad on 10 November.
3. The licence. The FAA has to approve the flight profile. For Flight 15, the licence came on launch day.
4. The pad. The launch tower and pad need checks and any repairs after each launch, and the tower also has to be ready to catch.

Starship terms are explained in our Starship glossary.

How long are the gaps between Starship flights?

These gaps use the liftoff dates (Starbase local time) on our Starship tracker, which come from SpaceX's mission pages.

The longest gap, before Flight 12, came when SpaceX switched to the bigger Version 3 (V3) rocket and a new pad. Since then the gaps have been 63, 66 and 46 days.

Simple arithmetic: a 46-day gap after 13 November would mean about 29 December 2026, and a 66-day gap would mean about 18 January 2027. This is not a forecast or a SpaceX date. In my view, the Flight 15 booster investigation and what SpaceX learns from the caught ship will matter more than past gaps.

For what happened on each flight, read every Starship flight so far.

How can I get an alert for Flight 16?

• Starship launch tracker: shows Flight 16 as "not announced" until SpaceX posts a date, then the window in your local time.
• Next Starship launch: the countdown page for whichever Starship flight is next.
• All upcoming launches: every orbital launch worldwide.
• Flight 16 email alert: use the "Email me when Flight 16 gets a date" box near the top of this page, or the signup form at the end, for launch times in your local time plus a weekly recap.

New to the rocket? Start with what is Starship? and how the Starship catch works.