Share this article
Join the conversation
SpaceX caught the upper stage of its Starship megarocket for the first time ever today (Nov. 14), a landmark achievement that could unlock the giant vehicle’s immense potential.
Starship launched on its 15th test flight on Friday evening (Nov. 13), rising into the sky from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas. The mission plan called for bringing both of the vehicle’s stages back to Starbase and catching them with the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms — an unprecedented total recovery of an orbital rocket.
That didn’t happen; Starship’s Super Heavy booster diverted to a Gulf of Mexico splashdown on Friday after experiencing a low-fuel alarm. But Ship succeeded in its attempt, notching a huge milestone for SpaceX and its dream of full rocket reuse.
“That was the missing link,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said during the company’s landing webcast today, his voice thick with emotion. “That was the holy grail of spaceflight, plummeting through fire to be snatched out of the air by steel. We caught a Starship, and now everything changes.”
The Ship catch occurred today at 4:20 p.m. EST (2120 GMT; 3:20 p.m. local Texas time), roughly 22.5 hours after Flight 15 lifted off.
Many SpaceX employees went outside to watch the vehicle, known as Ship 42, descend through the clouds toward its Starbase launch tower, which the company calls “Mechazilla.”
And they got quite a show: Ship 42 nestled gently into Mechazilla’s waiting arms, while “Baby Come Back” played over SpaceX’s landing webcast.
“This is so incredible to see,” SpaceX’s Jessie Anderson said during the livestream. “One of the most incredible and historic engineering feats of all time has just happened right in front of our eyes.”
Why was this such a big deal? SpaceX had already caught Super Heavy — on three previous Starship test flights, in fact. But it had never tried before with Ship. The upper stage is a tougher target, for it flies higher, farther and faster than the booster. Indeed, on Flight 15, Ship 42 came all the way back down from orbit.
While the double-catch attempt, and the chopsticks success with Ship, were Flight 15’s main headlines, the mission had other objectives as well. One was getting Ship to orbit, which had happened on just one previous Starship launch — Flight 14, which lifted off on Sept. 28.
Ship deployed 26 of SpaceX’s next-gen Starlink V3 broadband satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) on Flight 14, and it did so again on Flight 15. These 52 spacecraft are the first members of a constellation that will eventually consist of 100,000 satellites, if all goes according to SpaceX’s plan.
Some of those Starlink satellites took video and images of Ship 42’s heat shield to check its health for today’s landing attempt. Those images, combined with ground-based cameras, found Ship 42 to be in good shape and ready for its big moment.
SpaceX plans to use Starship to build an even bigger network in LEO than the Starlink V3 system — Starmind, an AI data-center constellation that will harbor a million spacecraft, according to Elon Musk. (For context: SpaceX’s current-gen Starlink network employs about 11,000 satellites at the moment.)
Assembling these megaconstellations will require an incredible launch cadence. The double chopstick catch is key to that vision, SpaceX says, for it will enable quicker inspection, refurbishment and reflight of Starship.
So the company will doubtless try the maneuver again soon — probably on the next Starship flight, which won’t be too far down the road.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 8 a.m. EST to include new details on SpaceX’s Starship Flight 15 mission from SpaceX. Space.com Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik contributed to this report. It was updated again at 4:45 p.m. ET on Nov. 14 with news of successful Ship catch.