The tower at SpaceX’s South Texas site has, for the first time, grabbed a returning Starship Ship out of the air. The catch happened on Saturday, 14 November, roughly 22 hours after Flight 15 left the pad.
The catch came at around 4:20 p.m. Eastern time. The Ship flew a slow descent through cloud, flipped upright and settled between the two arms of the tower SpaceX calls Mechazilla. The booster did not get the same ending: it was meant to be caught first, but it aborted its return on Friday and was lost over the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX’s own account on X announced the catch with a short video and congratulations to its team. The tower has caught Super Heavy boosters on earlier flights, so the new part here is the Ship, the piece that has to survive re-entry and heat before it can be caught at all.
Flight 15 was the 15th Starship test. SpaceX wanted both stages back at the tower, booster first and Ship a day on. After separation the booster lit 32 of its 33 engines for the boostback burn that turns it around, and later fired 13 engines for its landing burn. Instead of lining up with the tower it steered itself to a splashdown zone offshore, where its flight termination system fired and it broke up just above the water about 6.5 minutes after liftoff.
SpaceX has changed its explanation of the abort. A spokesperson first blamed a guidance issue, then said on Saturday that the guidance system had done its job by spotting that the booster was off the path needed for a catch. Another SpaceX engineer said early indications were that the booster cut its boostback burn short because of a low fuel mass alarm. The company says it is still working out the root cause.
The Ship carried 26 Starlink V3 satellites to orbit, some with cameras used to inspect the heat shield, and flew 14 orbits before coming back. A final go or no-go check came at about the 20-hour mark, with a splashdown off Hawaii as the fallback if the heat shield or flight data looked wrong. SpaceX went ahead with the tower landing.
The result matters beyond the stunt. Catching the Ship is what SpaceX needs to reuse the whole rocket, which it is counting on to lower launch costs for Starlink V3 satellites and for the lunar lander NASA has picked for its Artemis astronauts. No flight has yet returned both stages to the tower, which is the job left for the next Starship test.
