SpaceX launched the most ambitious Starship test yet on Friday, November 13, and the result so far is a mix of big wins and one notable miss.

The Ship upper stage reached orbit and released 26 Starlink satellites. But the Super Heavy booster, which SpaceX hoped to catch with the launch tower’s giant mechanical arms, aborted its return and came down in the Gulf of Mexico instead. The mission is not over yet: if all goes to plan, the Ship will attempt something no spacecraft has ever done on Saturday afternoon.

Liftoff from Starbase

Flight 15 lifted off from Starbase in South Texas at 5:47 p.m. Eastern time (4:47 p.m. local time), according to Space.com. The rocket climbed away on more than 18 million pounds of thrust from 33 Raptor 3 engines.

The early part of the flight went as planned. About two and a half minutes after launch, the booster shut down its engines and the Ship lit its own engines while still attached, a technique known as hot staging, then separated and kept climbing.

Why the booster catch was called off

The plan was for Super Heavy, here flown as Booster 22, to fly back to its launch pad about six and a half minutes after liftoff and be caught by the tower’s “chopstick” arms. It would have been the first catch of a Version 3 Super Heavy.

Instead, the booster diverted to a contingency splashdown offshore. “We were initially go for a catch but in the later stages of the coast the booster aborted itself for a GNC issue that it detected and that put it into its contingency landing offshore,” SpaceX commentator Dan Huot said, as reported by Spaceflight Now. GNC stands for guidance, navigation and control.

Spaceflight Now reports the booster exploded on reaching the water. SpaceX has caught three earlier-version boosters with the tower before, but a V3 booster has yet to make a successful return.

The Ship makes orbit

The upper stage kept going. A second engine burn of about 20 seconds placed it into orbit roughly 170 miles (275 kilometers) above Earth, Space.com reports.

“We’ve got a nominal orbit insertion, so Starship now in orbit around Earth for the second time ever,” Huot said during the webcast. “That’s a really great moment.” Starship first reached orbit on Flight 14 in September.

The Ship, known as Ship 42, then deployed 26 of SpaceX’s Starlink V3 satellites over about 42 minutes. That makes this flight both a test and a working mission for SpaceX’s internet satellite network.

The big moment still to come

Here is what makes Flight 15 special. Instead of a quick suborbital hop, the Ship is scheduled to circle Earth about 14 times and spend more than 21 hours in space before attempting to fly back to Starbase and be caught by the launch tower.

If everything stays healthy, that return is planned for Saturday, November 14, at about 4:17 p.m. Eastern time, roughly 22.5 hours after liftoff, according to Space.com. A successful catch would be the first time a Starship upper stage has ever been recovered after returning from orbit.

SpaceX built in several checkpoints where engineers can decide to bring the Ship down in the Pacific Ocean instead, if a return to the launch site looks unwise. The last of those checkpoints comes about 20 hours and 41 minutes into the flight, before a short deorbit burn.

Why this matters

Full reuse is the central idea behind Starship. Rockets that can be caught, refueled and flown again could sharply lower the cost of reaching orbit, which matters for everything from satellite networks to NASA’s plans to use a version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon.

Catching boosters was the first step, and SpaceX has done it before with earlier versions. Catching the Ship after it has endured the heat of reentry from orbit is a much harder problem.

What to watch

SpaceX typically streams its Starship missions live on its website and on X. If the Ship stays on track through its final checkpoint, all eyes will be on Starbase Saturday afternoon.

This article reflects the mission as of Saturday morning, before the planned return. Whether the catch succeeds or SpaceX opts for a splashdown, Flight 15 has already shown that Starship can reach orbit and deliver a full load of satellites. The next few hours will show how close it is to coming home in one piece.

Image: The launch of the SpaceX Starship 6 rocket seen from the space station (iss072e220043) by NASA/Don Pettit via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Mark 1.0