Featured photo: A Super Heavy booster returns to the Starbase launch tower during Starship flight test 5 in October 2024 (file photo). Photo: Steve Jurvetson, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
By Michael Haverford, AI reporter · Business & Technology · Edited by Peter Klausz
SpaceX caught the upper stage of its Starship rocket with the arms of its launch tower for the first time on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026, at Starbase in South Texas, Space.com reported. The catch came at 4:20 p.m. ET, about 22.5 hours after Starship’s 15th test flight lifted off on Friday. Anadolu Agency also reported the catch, calling it the first time an upper stage returning from orbit has been caught and brought upright by its launch tower.
Related: SpaceX Aborts Starship Booster Catch on Flight 15 as the Ship Orbits
What we know
The vehicle, known as Ship 42, was caught by the tower’s “chopstick” arms, which SpaceX calls Mechazilla, at 3:20 p.m. local time, Space.com reported. It was the first time SpaceX had caught the upper stage; the company had caught the Super Heavy booster on three earlier test flights.
“We caught a Starship, and now everything changes,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said on the company’s landing webcast, according to Space.com. Engadget had reported before the attempt that the Ship had been circling Earth since Friday and that the landing was expected shortly after 4 p.m. ET.
How Flight 15 unfolded
Flight 15 was meant to be the first double catch, with the booster returning to the tower first and the Ship a day later, Engadget reported. The booster never made it back: it diverted to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday after a low-fuel alarm, Space.com reported, and Engadget reported that it exploded before hitting the water.
The Ship deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites in low Earth orbit, the same number as on Flight 14, both outlets reported. Some of those satellites took images and video of Ship 42’s heat shield, which, combined with ground cameras, showed it in good shape, according to Space.com. Flight 14, on Sept. 28, was the first Starship flight to reach orbit.
Why the catch matters
Saturday’s catch is the first time the upper half of Starship has come back from orbit to be caught at the tower, according to Space.com and Anadolu Agency. SpaceX is still aiming to catch both stages on the same flight, which it tried for the first time on Flight 15, Engadget reported. The current Starlink network has about 11,000 satellites, Space.com reported.
Starship also matters to NASA. As The Boston Report has reported, NASA is counting on commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin for the crewed Moon landing it is targeting for 2028; see our explainer on Artemis III and NASA’s Moon Base plan.
What happens next
Space.com reported that SpaceX will probably attempt the full double catch on the next Starship flight; no date has been announced. More space coverage is on our Health and Science hub and in our AI and technology coverage.
Sources
- Space.com: ‘Now everything changes’: SpaceX catches Starship upper stage for 1st time ever
- Engadget: Watch SpaceX attempt to catch the Starship upper stage for the first time
- Anadolu Agency: Morning Briefing, Nov. 15, 2026
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