SpaceX wants permission to launch Starship from its South Texas base as many as 456 times a year, a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) notice shows, more than 18 times what the company is allowed today.
In the notice, filed Tuesday and published in the Federal Register Wednesday, the FAA said it will prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement on the plan. That is a broad review of the whole program, and it would also cover the licence changes and renewals that follow from it. Public comments are due Nov. 30.
Starbase, at Boca Chica on the Gulf Coast near Brownsville, is SpaceX’s main Starship test and launch site. The company currently can fly from Starbase up to 25 times a year, with 50 landings.
Two-phase plan
The plan comes in two steps. In the first, SpaceX could launch up to 100 times a year, at any hour on any day of the week. That alone is four times the current limit, or about two launches a week.
The second step lifts the ceiling to 456 launches a year, on weekdays only but at any hour. That works out to nearly nine launches a week. The notice describes it as “a mature program launching more than 100 times annually” that “would be implemented within several years.”
The Super Heavy booster would land at the launch site, set down softly in the Gulf of Mexico, or be expended in flight. Starship itself, the upper stage, would land at the site, in the Gulf or the open ocean, or be expended at sea.
Because both stages are meant to come back, the plan allows up to 912 landings a year at Starbase, twice the launch ceiling. That cap counts every landing there “regardless of the launch origin,” the notice says, so vehicles launched from other sites could also land there.
The FAA’s analysis assumes half of all launches and landings happen at night. Under the current approval, issued in May 2025, only three of the yearly launches may take place after dark, and most landings must happen in daylight.
Starbase’s rising launch ceiling
The launch limit has climbed quickly. A 2022 FAA review allowed five Starship launches a year from Starbase. The May 2025 decision raised that to 25 after a lighter review, an environmental assessment that ended in a finding of no significant impact conditional on mitigation measures.
The FAA’s environmental impact statement is the most detailed kind of review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a step up from the 2025 assessment. It will examine air quality, wildlife, coastal resources, noise, water, historic and cultural sites, and children’s health and safety, among other things. The FAA is also consulting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service on endangered species and protected marine life.
The FAA will weigh SpaceX’s new plan against the current approval, which would keep today’s limits in place. It ruled out other launch sites, saying Starbase already has the infrastructure. The FAA’s decision also covers the temporary airspace closures that go with the plan.
Starship’s flight record
Starship has flown 14 times since its first launch in April 2023, and never more than five times in a year, a total it reached in 2025. Its three flights this year include Flight 14 on Sept. 28, the first to reach orbit.
The notice ties the higher rates to the rocket’s progress: “As the vehicle continues to mature and reliability improves, launch and landing rates are expected to increase.” At the top of the range, Starbase could host more than three times as many launches in a year as the Space Shuttle flew in its 30-year career.
Florida and Louisiana
Texas is not SpaceX’s only Starship site. Earlier this year the FAA cleared up to 44 Starship launches a year from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Last November the Department of the Air Force approved up to 76 a year from Space Launch Complex 37 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, pending a further FAA review of airspace effects. No Starship has yet launched from Florida.
Together the two Florida sites could host about 120 launches a year, roughly a quarter of what SpaceX now wants from Texas alone. In August SpaceX also announced Starbase Louisiana, a Gulf Coast spaceport designed for 10 launch pads, with a first launch targeted for as soon as 2029, subject to its own environmental review.
Hearings in Brownsville
The FAA will hold scoping meetings, where the public can tell the agency what the review should cover, in Brownsville on Nov. 17 and Port Isabel on Nov. 19, with a virtual session on Nov. 18. Comments can be filed through the federal rulemaking portal under docket FAA-2026-12808, and more detail is on the FAA project page. A draft statement will follow for a second round of comment.