Starship Caught at the Tower in First Upper-Stage Catch

SpaceX launched Starship Flight 15 from Starbase, Texas, at 5:48 p.m. Eastern on Friday, November 13, the most ambitious flight the program has attempted. The plan asked for a first: catch both stages at the launch tower. The upper stage, Ship 42, reached orbit and deployed its full payload of 26 Starlink V3 satellites. The booster never came home.

Super Heavy Booster 22 was set to return to Pad 2 about six and a half minutes after liftoff. For reasons SpaceX hasn't specified, it diverted to a splashdown offshore in the Gulf instead. The booster exploded before it hit the water, and its remaining propellants burned off as it settled into the sea. The Associated Press reported that SpaceX called off the recovery attempt because of a technical issue.

The miss lands on the new hardware. Booster 22 is the first Version 3 Super Heavy, and a Version 3 booster still hasn't made a successful return. The tower has caught three boosters before, all of them earlier versions. SpaceX said before the flight that it would only attempt a catch if every system needed for the return was healthy, and it kept the Gulf splashdown as the standing backup.

The ship's half of the flight ran to plan. Ship 42 reached orbit at about 6:13 p.m. Eastern, only the second time a Starship has done so, and began releasing the 26 Starlink V3 satellites about 35 minutes after launch. The deployment sequence took about 42 minutes. SpaceX confirmed that all 26 satellites are in orbit and in contact. The company says the batch adds about a terabit of data capacity to the constellation.

What remains is the longer half of the mission. Ship 42 is coasting through a flight of up to 14 orbits, and SpaceX has it scheduled to return to Starbase about 22 and a half hours after launch, at about 4:20 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, November 14. A tower catch of a returning ship has never been tried. SpaceX holds two early exits if the ship's systems don't stay healthy: splashdowns off Hawaii and off Chile.

The flight is also the program's first from Pad 2 at Starbase, the new mount built for the larger Block 3 vehicles. Its return path to the tower crosses Mexico and South Texas, which is why the go-ahead for a catch attempt waits on the ship's health checks during the coast. SpaceX hasn't said yet whether it will attempt the catch.

Flight 15 therefore ends its first day split down the middle. The payload mission is complete, and the orbit milestone is real. The reusability mission, the one the whole Starship design rests on, is one booster short and one ship still out. Saturday's return attempt decides which half of the day defines the flight.

The hardware explains the stakes on both halves. The Super Heavy booster stands 236 feet tall and burns 33 Raptor engines on liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Ship 42, which SpaceX nicknamed “Don’t Panic,” is the upper stage the company eventually wants to fly with crew and cargo to the Moon and Mars. Every test flight is a data purchase: the company trades hardware it may not recover for measurements it can't get on the ground, and Flight 15 bought the full set on the ship's side of the ledger.

Update, Saturday: The flight's second half is now underway. SpaceX said Ship 42 is healthy, its heat shield is healthy, and the 26 Starlink V3 satellites are deployed. The ship is set to make the program's first-ever attempt to catch an upper stage at the tower — a return to Starbase scheduled for about 4:19 p.m. Eastern today, after the vehicle completes its orbit. The FAA advisory covering the reentry window runs from 20:56Z to 00:14Z.

Update, Saturday: It's a catch. SpaceX's tower caught Ship 42 at Starbase at about 4:19 p.m. Eastern — "Mechazilla catches Starship!" the company posted — the first time an orbital upper stage has been caught out of the air. The ship came home after a deorbit burn at about 3:23 p.m. Eastern and a flight of more than 22 hours, closing the mission the booster half couldn't: Booster 22's own catch was aborted on Friday and it splashed down in the Gulf instead.