Flight 16 hardware keeps moving at Starbase overnight
From the Space digest for Oct 28, 2026
Sources NASASpaceflight on X NASASpaceflight on X NASASpaceflight on X NASASpaceflight on X NASASpaceflight on X
What happened: NSF relays tracked both Flight 16 assets through the night of October 27 into early October 28: after two overnight delays at Massey's with Booster 23 spotted in the doorway (~10:38 PM ET October 27) and Ship 43 passing by its ride to space (~11:58 PM ET October 27), later relays confirmed Ship 43 returned to the production site from its Pad 2 chopstick catch tests (~12:25 AM ET October 28), with Booster 23 set to head out to Massey's for cryotesting — and the pair expected to sail to Kennedy Space Center to be the first Starship flight from 39A (NASASpaceflight on X, NASASpaceflight on X, NASASpaceflight on X, NASASpaceflight on X). SpaceX's own channel then confirmed the Flight 15 ship's test campaign complete: Ship 42 performed a full-duration six-engine static fire and fired a single Raptor engine to simulate a deorbit burn (NASASpaceflight on X, ~12:10 PM ET October 28).
What's genuinely new: Ship 42's static-fire campaign is confirmed complete, with a single-engine deorbit-burn simulation added to the full-duration six-engine fire — the named flight-profile detail ahead of the November 8 attempt. The same relays state SpaceX is running two flows in parallel for Flights 15 and 16 (~1:00 AM ET October 28), alongside Ship 43's return from its October 27 Pad 2 catch testing and Booster 23's Massey's cryotesting assignment ahead of the Florida move. The Flight 15 side of the split is a passed milestone: both halves of the stack completed static fires (Booster 22's 33-engine Pad 2 fire October 25, Ship 42's full six-engine Massey's fire October 27).
Watch: Flight 15's November 8 target with its planned first-ever catch of both stages, the start of Booster 23's Massey's cryotesting, and the Ship 43 / Booster 23 pair's move to Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A for the first Starship launch from Florida.