SpaceX launched the 15th test flight of its massive Starship rocket on Friday attempting an unprecedented double-catch maneuver to test full reusability.
Liftoff occurred from the Starbase facility in South Texas during a 75-minute window that opened at 5:47 p.m. ET, according to Space.com. The flight marked the 15th test of the vehicle and only its second trip to orbit, following a successful orbital insertion in September, Astronomy Magazine reported.
Standing over 400 feet tall, the megarocket roared to life powered by 33 methane-burning Raptor engines holding 8 million pounds of supercold liquid oxygen and methane fuel, CBS News noted.
Booster Diversion Occurs Following Technical Problem During Descent
Following stage separation, the 236-foot Super Heavy booster reoriented for a planned return to the launch site, but encountered an issue that prompted flight controllers to order a diversion. Flight controllers ordered the diversion a little more than six minutes after liftoff due to a technical problem, while long-range cameras captured the booster descending through steam before residual propellants ignited in a fireball.
Offshore divert for the booster. No Super Heavy catch back at Starbase.
Meanwhile, the upper-stage spacecraft successfully reached low Earth orbit at an altitude of around 170 miles, according to Space.com and Yahoo Finance. “We’ve got a nominal orbit insertion, so Starship now in orbit around Earth for the second time ever,” said Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesperson, during the live webcast.
The upper stage deployed 26 next-generation Starlink internet satellites, increasing the constellation's data capacity. The upper stage vehicle, designated as Ship 42, was scheduled to circle Earth 14 times during a mission lasting more than 21 hours before beginning its reentry maneuvers.
Starship is now in a long coast phase around Earth. Teams will monitor Starship’s systems over the next ~21 hours that we intend to be in orbit for. We do have a few early deorbit options available should we need them, but all systems are looking good right now
The Pursuit of Full Reusability
SpaceX refers to the development of a fully reusable rocket as the “holy grail” of rocketry, which would open the door to an airplane-like cadence where vehicles fly again rapidly, as reported by USA Today. While the company routinely reuses lower-stage boosters on its smaller Falcon 9 rocket, capturing both sections of an orbital-class vehicle remains a critical hurdle.
“Safety is always the number one priority, and we’re still testing out things that we haven’t done before on these vehicles, and so we are prioritising making sure that we can perform each maneuver safely,” a SpaceX spokesperson said during the broadcast, according to the BBC.
During a company video titled “Go for Orbit,“senior principal Mars landing engineer Lars Blackmore noted the difficulty of relying on engines for a final return-to-launch-site maneuver, stating that it is”pretty scary.” Earlier, Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, highlighted at a NASA tech summit at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center that scaled-up infrastructure combined with full rocket reusability is the path to scaling launch volume exponentially.
Company leadership has previously indicated that once Starship flies reliably multiple times per week, engineering and production resources will shift entirely to Starship to achieve daily launch rates, eventually winding down the Falcon rocket line.
Payload deploy complete. All 26 @Starlink V3 satellites are in orbit pic.twitter.com/y2ffFifGdo
The Starship program is central to the company’s broader growth and operational thesis. In the third quarter, SpaceX brought in $14.6 billion in revenue, with the Space segment accounting for $1.8 billion, while Starlink pulled in around $12.8 billion and its AI business generated $10.9 billion, according to financial figures cited by Yahoo Finance.
Elon Musk has targeted massive launch increases to support deployment of the Starlink constellation and other payloads, including potential future deliveries of data centers to space.
Starship is 2 to 3 years away from hourly flights
Starship Variant Supports NASA Artemis Lunar Mission Goals
Beyond commercial satellite deployment, NASA is counting on a variant of Starship to serve as a crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program, with a demonstration mission slated to fly with Artemis III astronauts to Earth orbit in the summer of 2027 and a lunar landing targeted for 2028, according to Space.com and The New York Times.
While those initial crewed missions do not require launch tower catches, ongoing development milestones remain closely watched by the space agency.
Earlier coverage: SpaceX Aborts Super Heavy Catch and Deploys Starlink Satellites
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