Starship Reaches Orbit on 15Th Flight Before Booster Explodes
Starship reached orbit on its 15th test flight from Texas on Friday though its lower-stage booster rocket exploded over the Gulf of Mexico after an aborted return attempt.
The combined vehicle stands 40 stories high, featuring the main Starship vessel perched atop its Super Heavy booster rocket.
During the flight, the spacecraft delivered 26 operational Starlink satellites to orbit within the first two hours. Elon Musk’s company uses Starship to expand its satellite internet network and deploy future orbital AI data-processing centres known as Starmind.
Bringing the upper stage back intact would allow for a fully recyclable rocket system, reducing spaceflight costs. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the long-term goal of achieving full reusability across all flight hardware.
The lower-stage booster rocket separated from the upper stage within minutes of the launch but failed to complete its planned return to the launch tower. The booster was diverted from its flight path to the Gulf of Mexico, where it momentarily hovered aloft before exploding a short distance over the sea surface.
SpaceX routinely recovers the booster stages of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets by flying them back to separate landing pads or floating platforms at sea. Starship’s lower-stage booster had previously been recovered on three test flights using the launch-tower catching mechanism, most recently in March 2025.
It was not immediately clear why the booster catch failed or what caused the diversion from the return flight path. SpaceX mission controllers hoped to use the same “chopstick” arm technology for the booster that they intended to use for catching the upper stage.
Following roughly 24 hours in orbit, Starship’s unmanned upper-stage craft is scheduled to re-enter the atmosphere and head back to the launch structure, where the catch mechanism will help secure an engine-guided touchdown. Musk stated an expectation to achieve a pace of weekly Starship launches by the first half of 2027.
Guiding the upper stage back to its origin point upon mission completion is intended to achieve the first-ever orbital round trip of a vertically launched rocket returning precisely where it started. Back in September, SpaceX flew Starship and a satellite cargo into orbit for the first time despite experiencing engine difficulties mid-flight.