SpaceX Catches Starship Upper Stage for First Time, Booster Lost to Gulf Splashdown

SpaceX caught the upper stage of its Starship rocket for the first time on Saturday, using the mechanical "chopsticks" arms attached to the launch tower at its Starbase facility in South Texas, CNBC reported. Space.com similarly reported that SpaceX caught the Starship upper stage on Nov. 14 for the first time ever, wrapping up the Flight 15 mission — the first recovery of a Starship returning from orbit.

Test Flight 15 was the first time the company attempted to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage, according to CNBC and Space.com. Only one of those attempts succeeded. CNBC reported that SpaceX failed to catch and recover the booster, instead diverting it to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, where it exploded before hitting the water. Space.com reported that Booster 22 splashed down in the Gulf after aborting the planned launch pad catch.

SpaceX's Kate Tice said during the company's Flight 15 webcast that "early indications are that the booster ended its boostback [burn] early due to a low fuel mass alarm," according to Space.com. Tice added that "the team is still investigating the root cause on that," and that "booster guidance then detected that it wasn't in the right position as it was flying back, so the booster correctly aborted itself from the tower catch and went for an offshore water divert instead." Space.com also reported that SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot initially attributed the divert to a guidance, navigation and control (GNC) issue, but later said the GNC system performed as expected during Super Heavy's return to Earth, with the team "still digging into the root cause."

The upper stage continued into orbit and flew around the Earth 14 times before landing on SpaceX's launch tower, nicknamed Mechazilla, CNBC reported. During the flight, SpaceX deployed 26 of its newest Starlink V3 satellites into orbit, according to both CNBC and Space.com.

The test flight window coincided with two separate aviation disruptions. CNBC reported that the Hawaii Department of Transportation issued a temporary pause on some West Coast flights Friday due to debris risk from the flight, and that the Federal Aviation Administration separately issued a rare nationwide ground stop because of telecommunications system failures. Space.com reported that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a social media post the national ground stop was due to a "communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers." Both orders have since been lifted, CNBC reported.

SpaceX's Dan Huot called the catch "the missing link" and "the holy grail of space flight, plummeting through fire to be snatched out of the air by steel," adding, "We caught a Starship, and now everything changes," according to Space.com.

Bottom line: Based on the reported facts, Flight 15 delivered a split result: a first-ever upper-stage catch alongside a booster recovery that was aborted and ended in the Gulf. CNBC reported that SpaceX needs Starship to send more satellites into orbit to expand Starlink, currently the company's profit center, and that SpaceX is also expected to use Starship to carry astronauts and cargo between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface for NASA, while Elon Musk has a stated vision to "colonize Mars" and "make humanity multi-planetary." Interpreting those reported goals, a repeatable upper-stage catch is a prerequisite for the rapid reuse those plans assume, though the unresolved booster investigation described by SpaceX means the full recovery architecture has not yet been demonstrated end to end.