SpaceX Launches Starship Flight 15, Aborts Booster Catch

SpaceX launched the 15th test flight of its Starship rocket on Nov. 13, 2026, from Starbase, Texas, but aborted the planned catch of the Super Heavy booster, according to Space.com.

Flight 15 lifted off at 5:47 p.m. ET (2247 GMT; 4:47 p.m. local Texas time). The Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage cleared the tower and climbed under more than 18 million pounds of thrust from the booster's 33 Raptor 3 engines. Main engine cutoff and hot-staging occurred about 2.5 minutes after launch.

SpaceX originally planned to catch Super Heavy with the launch tower's giant mechanical "chopstick" arms. The company called off the catch attempt and brought the booster down for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about 6.5 minutes after launch, for reasons that were not immediately clear. The FT reported that the booster flipped over and exploded in the sea after an "offshore divert."

The upper stage, Ship, continued its mission. Its Raptors completed a first burn just after eight minutes into flight, and a second burn lasting about 20 seconds parked Ship in low Earth orbit at an altitude of around 170 miles (275 kilometers) at T+26 minutes and 10 seconds.

"We’ve got a nominal orbit insertion, so Starship now in orbit around Earth for the second time ever," SpaceX's Dan Huot said during today's Flight 15 launch webcast.

Ship is carrying 26 Starlink V3 spacecraft, to be deployed into LEO over a 42-minute span starting 35 minutes after launch. Three of the V3 Starlinks are equipped with cameras to analyze Ship's heatshield tiles and other hardware after deployment.

Ship is scheduled to circle Earth 14 times, spending more than 21 hours in space before coming home. SpaceX will proceed with a 10-second deorbit burn at approximately T+21 hours and 36 minutes if Ship's systems remain healthy. If all goes according to plan, Ship will return to Starbase on Saturday at approximately 4:17 p.m. EST (2117 GMT; 3:17 p.m. Texas time), about 22.5 hours after liftoff. A successful catch would be the first-ever recovery of a Starship upper stage.

SpaceX has recovered three V1 Super Heavy vehicles and reused two of those in later flights. A successful catch of the V3 Super Heavy would have been the first successful recovery of that version.

Full reusability is central to SpaceX's ambitions for launching V3 Starlink satellites and a proposed constellation of orbital data centers. SpaceX is targeting 10,000 Starship liftoffs per year by 2030, according to Musk. NASA selected Starship as one of the Artemis program's crewed lunar landers, slated to fly a demonstration mission with NASA's Orion spacecraft and Artemis III astronauts to Earth orbit in the summer of 2027.

Sources

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.