Starfighters Space is preparing a December 2026 captive-carry flight of its STARLAUNCH 1 suborbital development vehicle beneath an F-104 Starfighter. The sortie is planned between the company’s base at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the FAA-licensed Cecil Spaceport in Jacksonville, with the inert vehicle remaining attached throughout the mission and no release, rocket ignition or attempt to reach space.
The flight is intended to assess STARLAUNCH 1’s aerodynamic behaviour, verify its integration with the carrier aircraft and establish procedures for later drop and powered-flight tests. Starfighters completed wind-tunnel testing and finalised the vehicle’s airframe design before ordering inert flight hardware from Italian engineering company Robby Moto Engineering. The hardware is expected at the company’s Kennedy Space Center hangar in November for assembly and interface testing.
The planned sortie will move the programme from ground-based development into flight testing. Starfighters intends to follow it with an Atlantic Ocean drop test and a demonstration of the integrated propulsion system, subject to hardware delivery, integration work and regulatory requirements. The company’s longer-term profile involves an F-104 climb to about 45,000 feet at Mach 2 before releasing the vehicle, conditions that will not form part of the captive-carry mission.
STARLAUNCH 1 is being developed as a suborbital pathfinder for short-duration microgravity missions and for the STARLAUNCH 2 orbital air-launch concept. Hardware known as Wind Tunnel in the Sky may also be carried beneath the opposite wing as a potential customer-funded rideshare and aerodynamic counterweight.