Flight 15 stack fully static-fire tested; Ship 42 named for the first tower catch
From the Space digest for Oct 29, 2026
What happened: SpaceX's Starship Flight 15 pre-flight test campaign is now complete on both sides of the stack. Booster 22 fired all 33 Raptor engines at Pad 2 on October 25, and on October 28 SpaceX's own channel confirmed Ship 42's campaign at the Massey's test site — a full-duration six-engine static fire plus a single-engine burn simulating a deorbit burn. Overnight, tracking feeds showed Ship 42 leaving Massey's on Highway 4, headed back to the production site after finishing testing. Meanwhile, a roundup article states Elon Musk has singled out Ship 42 as the vehicle designated to achieve the first-ever tower catch of a Starship upper stage.
What's genuinely new: The full test checkout of the Flight 15 stack — both the booster and the ship — is confirmed as passed, with the deorbit-burn simulation a new named checkout step, directly relevant to bringing the upper stage back for a catch. The naming of Ship 42 as the catch vehicle is a first specific link between that hardware and the first-ever upper-stage catch, which prior reporting had established as a both-stages goal for Flight 15 on November 8 but without a named ship.
Watch: Whether the November 8 target holds, the rollout of the combined stack to Pad 2, and the catch attempt itself — the first time SpaceX would try to recover both stages of a Starship.