(VIDEO) SpaceX Catches Starship With Chopsticks for First Time After 14 Orbits, but Heavy Booster Explodes

STARBASE, Texas — SpaceX caught the upper stage of its Starship rocket with its launch tower's giant mechanical arms on Saturday. It was the first time a spacecraft returning from orbit has been plucked out of the air, a major step toward the company's goal of a fully reusable rocket.

The Ship upper stage, known as Ship 42, settled into the tower's "chopsticks" at about 3:20 p.m. local time (4:20 p.m. EST, 21:20 GMT). It had spent about 22.5 hours in flight and circled Earth 14 times.

"Can you believe it?" a commentator said as crowds cheered at the launch site in South Texas, the BBC reported.

The catch came a day after a setback. On Friday, the rocket's Super Heavy booster aborted its own catch attempt minutes after launch and was destroyed over the Gulf of Mexico.

"The Holy Grail of Spaceflight"

SpaceX officials celebrated during the company's livestream.

"That was the holy grail of spaceflight, plummeting through fire to be snatched out of the air by steel," SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said. "We caught a Starship, and now everything changes."

SpaceX's Jessie Anderson called it "one of the most incredible and historic engineering feats of all time."

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk welcomed the result on X. "Mechazilla catches Starship!" he wrote, using the nickname for the launch tower. He also congratulated his "incredible team."

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, whose agency is relying on Starship to land astronauts on the moon, also praised the achievement.

"Congrats to Elon Musk and the SpaceX team! It was almost magic..Making more believers by the day....one step closer to the Moon," Isaacman posted on X.

A Harder Catch Than the Booster

SpaceX has caught its Super Heavy booster with the tower's arms several times since first doing so in October 2024. Until Saturday, it had never tried the maneuver with the Ship.

Catching the upper stage is much harder. The spacecraft falls far faster and from a much higher altitude than the booster, and it must survive the intense heat of reentering Earth's atmosphere.

Before the descent, SpaceX checked the Ship's heat shield using Starlink satellites it had deployed during the flight. Some of them carried cameras that photographed the vehicle's underside to confirm its condition.

The Ship then fired its engines to return to the launch site and slipped between the chopstick arms above Launch Pad 2.

Booster Lost in the Gulf

Flight 15 was the first time SpaceX tried to catch both stages of the rocket in one mission.

The 407-foot (124-meter) Starship lifted off from Starbase on Friday evening. The Super Heavy booster, known as Booster 22, was supposed to return to the tower about six and a half minutes after launch.

Instead, it aborted the catch and headed for an offshore splashdown. Its flight termination system was triggered, and a fireball erupted just before it hit the water.

SpaceX gave several partial explanations. Huot said Friday that "the booster was not in the place that it was supposed to be to proceed with the catch," adding that engineers were still investigating the root cause.

On Saturday, SpaceX's Kate Tice said: "Early indications are that the booster ended its boost back early due to a low fuel mass alarm." She said the booster followed its safety protocols on its own and protected the launch pad.

Musk said on X that the booster had been slightly low on fuel. He suggested that slight underperformance during the flight contributed to the abort.

Starlink Satellites Deployed

Besides the catch attempts, the flight had other goals. Ship 42 reached orbit, only the second Starship upper stage to do so after Ship 41 on Flight 14 in September.

During the mission, Starship deployed 26 of SpaceX's next-generation Starlink V3 satellites. That brings the total it has launched across its two orbital flights to 52.

The larger V3 satellites are designed to expand the capacity of SpaceX's Starlink internet network, which already has thousands of satellites in orbit.

Why the Catch Matters

SpaceX's goal is a rocket that can be flown again and again, like an airplane, at a fraction of the cost of traditional rockets.

Catching both stages at the launch site would let SpaceX inspect, refurbish and refly them much faster than if they splashed down at sea. The company already reuses the first stages of its Falcon 9 rockets, which land on drone ships or landing pads. That has made it the world's dominant launch provider.

Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, is designed to be fully reusable, with both stages recovered.

Musk has said a fully reusable Starship could sharply cut the cost of reaching space. That would make it possible to launch large satellite constellations, build bases on the moon and eventually send people to Mars.

Key to NASA's Moon Plans

Starship's progress is closely watched by NASA. The agency picked a version of the vehicle to serve as the lunar lander for its Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon's surface for the first time since 1972.

The program has faced years of delays as SpaceX works through new engineering problems. Before it can land astronauts on the moon, Starship must show it can refuel in orbit, transferring large amounts of propellant between vehicles.

After Friday's launch, Isaacman congratulated SpaceX on "another spectacular launch," without mentioning the loss of the booster.

What Comes Next

SpaceX is expected to try the double catch again soon, probably on the next Starship flight.

Engineers will review data from Flight 15, including the booster's performance and the cause of Friday's abort, before the next launch.

Even with the booster lost, Saturday's catch gave SpaceX its biggest Starship milestone in nearly two years and its first catch of the vehicle on return from orbit.