Starfighters Space to carry Starlaunch 1 beneath an F-104 in December test

Starfighters Space plans to fly its Starlaunch 1 suborbital development vehicle on a captive-carry test in December 2026, mounted beneath the wing of one of its F-104 Starfighter aircraft. The vehicle stays attached for the whole mission. No release will be attempted.

The company said on October 13 that the airframe design is finalised and that inert flight hardware has been ordered from Robby Moto Engineering, an Italian firm. It is due to arrive at the company's hangar at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in November, where the vehicle will be assembled and its interface with the carrier aircraft checked before the flight.

Chief executive Tim Franta said the test would move Starlaunch 1 from design and ground-based work into flight testing. He described the approach as deliberately incremental: build the hardware, integrate it with the aircraft, fly it, gather data, and use the results to work toward separation and powered flight. The company also expects the effort to build engineering and operational experience for a later Starlaunch 2.

The flight is expected to run between Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Cecil Spaceport in Jacksonville, which holds a licence from the Federal Aviation Administration. It aims to show how the vehicle behaves in flight and to verify its integration with the aircraft. Wind tunnel testing of the vehicle was completed earlier this year.